“... black eyes, as impenetrable as those of a cobra. There was a generous curve to the big nose and power in the square lines of the vast jaw.’ Not even an anti-semite like Christie would risk such a passage today. In the same book, she introduces a ‘Herzoslovakian’ peasant, Boris Anchoukoff, with ‘high Slavonic cheekbones, and dreamy fanatic ...”

“... the idea of universal human rights with the greatest vigour in the 1940s. But when New Labour took power in 1997, with its talk of human rights and ethical foreign policy, its future role as a quasi-colonial power was somehow not anticipated. Equally unanticipated was the long reach of Article 3, with its prohibition of ...”

“... The English, being ‘not very fond of cardinals’, and not very fond of builders of royal power, have despised or caricatured Wolsey as ‘a royal favourite and a meddlesome priest’. Fertile as Gwyn’s challenge to that picture is, it has to be said that, like many critics of Protestant and Whig historiography, he does not define it carefully or ...”

“... the period, many of London’s propertied classes seem to have believed, however grudgingly, that power was passing back to the Stuart dynasty. The artificial legitimacy of the post-1688 monarchy had melted and even London’s Whig merchants and financiers accepted that the coronation of Charles III was imminent. Regime change was apparently confirmed by the ...”

“... Adrienne Rich, envied and wrestled with as an equal artist. Eliot and Yeats, her early delights. Anne Sexton and George Starbuck, with a few ‘immortal’ love poems between them. ‘Skunk Hour’ (Lowell’s response to Bishop’s ‘The Armadillo’) is instrumental, since it includes the poet as part of a blasted landscape: the hell of its heaven and ...”

“... for publication at the time, this group of linked stories conveys an implicit faith in the power of fiction to act as a prophylaxis against false philosophy and perverted dogma. The irony of the title is expected to act as a solvent upon such artificial and old-fashioned constraints. Five women, each of whom has an individual predicament though her ...”

“... to learn that Mayfair retains its high status and exclusive reputation: but the riches and power to which it now plays host are institutional and governmental rather than patrician or titled. The Mayfair Estate came into the Grosvenor family through an advantageous marriage in 1677 between Sir Thomas Grosvenor and the heiress Mary Davies, who also ...”

“... at a progressive boarding school and joined the Communist Young Pioneers. When Hitler came to power the family fled, after brief stops in Switzerland and France, to the Great Soviet Union the boys had heard so much about. Markus remained there for 11 years, becoming ‘Misha’ and acquiring fluent Russian during a Moscow adolescence. The Purges affected ...”

“... traiterous and wicked designs … and also craftily designed to reproach and scandalise [Queen Anne’s] wise and faithful ministry, divide her councils, create variances, disputes and discords in her parliament, and to raise and foment animosities, fears and jealousies amongst all her people’. A reprint was swiftly issued to replace incinerated ...”

“... in the world invest in and encourage those projections (think, for example, of the Beefeater or Anne Hathaway’s cottage) as well as exploiting them for their own ends. What we are dealing with, in other words, is one aspect of the power struggle – or at least the complex negotiation – between visitor and ...”

“... Facebook may have started as a way to rank one woman’s hotness over another’s, but it has been quick to produce its first feminists. Everything goes faster in Silicon Valley: code is written overnight; engineers get around the office on aerodynamic skateboards called RipStiks; a company less than ten years old is worth $104 billion for a day before losing $35 billion in value ...”

“... In her introduction to Records of Woman, Feldman agrees with other Romanticists such as Anne Mellor and Jerome McGann that Hemans ‘defies’, ‘undercuts’ and ‘criticises’ the feminine domestic ideal she appears to represent. In other words, she emerges from the 20th century less of a lady than was previously thought, and more of a ...”

“... Richard Flanagan trained as a historian, and his novels have often emphasised the redemptive power of memory. For his characters, though, remembering is a strenuous business. There are traps to be avoided and barriers to overcome – an obstacle course of crying jags, guilt-ridden stupors, deathbed hallucinations ...”

“... governance. Royal intimacy might have been delicious and intoxicating, but it came with real power.Francis Bacon – who had known a few favourites and was himself a favourite of Buckingham’s – knew it was an office to be discharged carefully. ‘You are his shadow,’ he warned Buckingham, and since ‘the king himself is above the reach of his ...”

“... Norton, the Jaguars lay nose-to-nose with the Daimlers and the 300SL Mercedes. Fleets of scarlet power boats slashed the Blackwater with their wakes, and the marina at Bradwell was slacked solid with Chris Crafts and Princesses. People here were fast and flash; they had fun, and they enjoyed letting other people see the colour of their money. We took to ...”