“... out ‘it was snowing butterflies,’ and such in fact was the appearance.In 1845 the publisher John Murray reissued the book for a large public. Darwin became a literary celebrity. Voyage of the Beagle (to use the title Murray gave it) is a vivid travelogue, but it also carries heavy theoretical freight. Darwin was struck by ‘how exactly the animals and ...”

“... with ministers who were either secret Communists or Communist sympathisers. Given the fierce libel laws in this country there was no way such allegations could be published in the normal manner. Instead MI5 leaked the smear to journalists who obligingly wrote stories hinting at the substance, while sometimes hypocritically expressing their distaste: ‘some ...”

“... of the affairs of the kingdom and in determining or choosing those that shall determine what laws we shall be ruled by here – no person has a right to this that hath not a permanent fixed interest in the kingdom.’ After all, he went on (and on and on) was there not a danger that a parliament elected by the people might confiscate property? And if ...”

“... the result of a very long chain of accidents, explainable only in terms of the non-purposive laws of particle physics. That the process ever got started, with the formation of a suitable self-replicating molecule, seems to have depended on a chemical accident, though it is not possible at present to construct a realistic scenario that makes probable its ...”

“... New York journal on 18 February. This was not a new sentiment in the United States. In 1823 John Quincy Adams had suggested that ‘there are laws of political as well as of physical gravitation,’ so all New World Newtons ought to know what to do: if an apple, severed by the tempest from its native tree, cannot ...”

“... which had been suddenly transformed by the scientists into a vast machine governed by mathematical laws, where God had become a remote first cause and man an insignificant “reas’ning Engine” ’; he was trying to escape from ‘the Cartesian-Newtonian world picture, a civilised city of good taste, common sense and reason’. Apart from the fact that ...”

“... hearts, and made legible to their eyes, the law of Christianity in its central harmony with the laws of the Jew and of the Greek: and gave them the glories of Venetian art in true inheritance from the angels of that Athenian Rock, above which Ion spread his starry tapestry, and under whose shadow his mother had gathered the crocus in the dew. In The Queen ...”

“... still policed its own members and more than a few were called to the bar for going too far. Sir John Coventry, whose story is told in Patterson’s dazzling prelude, might not have had his nose slit open, supposedly with the king’s approval, if he had been disciplined by his peers for casting aspersions on the king’s morals. The privacy of debate was ...”

“... admiration of patriots in the American colonies. She corresponded with Abigail Adams, the wife of John Adams, and with Mercy Otis Warren, later herself to become a historian of the American Revolution. In 1784-85 she visited America, meeting George Washington. The next year she visited France, and her final publication, which came out in 1791, was a pamphlet ...”

“... show buildings that are still quite recognisable today; pictures of the ‘Cromwell curve’, with John Fowler’s concrete bridge of 1867-9, are evidence of the scale of engineering work now masked by later building and softened by vegetation. The railways have proved adequate. Reading the plans of the St Mary Abbots Hospital, on the other hand, shows how ...”

“... Joseph Ellis should now venture an answer to this question, having already produced biographies of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, as well as a book about the 1790s, Founding Brothers, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001. Like many Americans, George Washington took arms against Britain in 1775 resignedly. He was 43, a veteran of the Seven Years’ War and a ...”

“... England (S.T. Bindoff, 1950), England Under the Tudors (G.R. Elton, 1955), Tudor England again (John Guy, 1988), branding the age – see J.A. Williamson’s The Tudor Age (1953) – with the logo of the double rose of the dynasty which, conveniently, coincided with a generous 16th century of 118 years, 1485 to 1603. It is a good question how we would have ...”

“... of State for Foreign Affairs. That was fully up to the level of prickliness displayed by John Thadeus Delane, editor of the Times, in his famous exchange with Lord Derby over the accession to power of Napoleon III 28 years earlier, and serves to show that, even if the Standard had allowed its financial independence to be corrupted, it never permitted ...”

“... and tone is part of the method. It ensures that the reviewer’s prejudices will not harden into laws; the momentum of the sentences he hands down will always carry him towards self-revelation. This use of semi-colons exemplifies Empson’s belief that ideas are created and developed through dialogue. ‘Controversy demands imagination; you must try to ...”

“... Even incidentally, there’s a broad, unlikely set of references to literature – to Saki and John Fowles and Gatsby’s ‘old sport’. In more detail, a character called Clem Snide does a Sam Spade impression and spends his days checking into Hiltons on a headless-body murder investigation. The case involves drugs, black magic and an Egyptian sunset ...”