“... of Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s perspective, the clown suit has been deliberately put on. James begins, as Twain’s novel does, with Huck and Tom contemplating tying Jim to a tree while he sleeps, settling for hanging his hat on a high branch.Those white boys, Huck and Tom, watched me. They were always playing some kind of pretending game where I was ...”

“... task. He has edited the new seven-volume edition of the Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin, having edited previously, with some help from Marilyn Butler, all of Godwin’s novels. Philp is undoubtedly the country’s leading Godwinian, having established his authority with his study of Political Justice. He has perhaps become ...”

“... the search for Franklin began, and 1859, when M’Clintock discovered some grisly remains on King William Island, almost thirty naval and overland expeditions joined the search. A writer has to juggle the names of explorers, famous in their day, but now known only to Arctic buffs, such as John and James Clark ...”

“... We know​ a gratifying amount about William Byrd, partly thanks to quite recent archival rediscoveries, and Kerry McCarthy splendidly and concisely presents it all in this intelligent and affectionate biography. Alas, the one thing we don’t have is a contemporary portrait, not even anything as clumsy as the universally recognisable dome-headed icon of Shakespeare: the portrait-image of Byrd adorning CD sleeves and scores is an unimaginative Georgian-Tudor pastiche ...”

“... his mother, Dawn Chadwick, and their old friend (or acceptable enemy, depending how you read it), William Nelson. These people are all failures, all refugees, all victims. Chadwick is a failed stockbroker. Nelson is a man in what used to be known as ‘reduced circumstances’: a failure in banking, a refugee from the nightmare memory of watching a close ...”

“... merchant turned cattle herdsman), Sir Richard Bulkeley (an early 18th-century hunchback virtuoso), William Blake (‘I see so little of Mr Blake now,’ his wife once complained: ‘He is always in Paradise’), and James Pierrepont Greaves (damned by Carlyle as a ‘blockhead’ and an ‘imbecile’), preferred to leave ...”

“... his The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. has been reviewed in these pages, nor are Norman Stone, James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes always less fanciful. And if Hitler’s personality remains an unanswered question, so too, does the history of National Socialism – which a book like Robert Harbison’s recent Deliberate Regression: The disastrous ...”

“... containing his correspondence with one or more persons – for example, Edward Garnett, William Blackwood and Cunninghame Graham. Early letters to Polish friends and relations have been translated, and a series of about a hundred to Marguerite Poradowska appeared in the original French. However, it seems that ‘more than a third of Conrad’s ...”

“... a box containing the original illustrations from Every Short Story (2012). They tumbled out like a William Blake vision: boggle-eyed angler fish, flying horses, crying demons, brain babies, Amazonian women, scenes of bacchanalia: a smorgasbord of grotesquerie. In another box, I discovered an exquisite book called ‘Morag’s Museum’, which Gray made for ...”

“... was the era of Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones, when the masque was at its extravagant height under James I, and in 1613, around the time this portrait was painted, Lanier composed his first masque song, ‘Bring away this sacred tree’, and performed it at court in The Squires’ Masque. Lanier was looking for advancement and perhaps having his picture ...”

“... essays. Observations of the gardens at Chatsworth, culled from a forgotten book by the antiquarian William Stukeley and an unpublished diary by Sir John Percival, make possible a significant contribution to the debate about the models for Timon’s villa in the Epistle to Burlington. Patient research into Chancery records yields an amusing note on ‘The Case ...”

“... part is the Irish word dáire, meaning ‘wooded island’. The London prefix dates from 1613 when James 1 granted a charter to the Society of Governors and Assistants, London, of the New Plantation of Ulster, known then and now as the Honourable The Irish Society. The Hon. The Irish Society was strictly a business proposition, like the East India Company, and ...”

“... cultural boundary-crossing, opens Fintan O’Toole’s White Savage, on the fascinating career of William Johnson in 18th-century British America. Though well-known to scholars, Johnson’s story has not hitherto received the notice it deserves from the general readers who are clearly targeted here. O’Toole plans two follow-up volumes; his overall project ...”

“... are brought into a sort of relation in the classic fashion of economics: a century earlier. Sir William Petty had valued an Englishman at £86/13/3, but then he probably would have applied a discount to Highlanders because of their violence, tartan, bagpipes, chivalry, Gaelic etc. Over the fate of the 800 men, let us not linger: actually, it doesn’t bear ...”

“... At first it was supposed that William Marsh Rice, millionaire and founder of Rice University in Texas, had died from eating bananas; nine bananas, in fact, five baked and four raw. He had invited his valet Charlie Jones to join him. The valet, who later confessed that he had Chloroformed his employer, refused: ‘I told him that I was afraid of bananas and wouldn’t try any ...”