“... from The Grocery Shop by Gerrit Dou (1613-75), now in the Queen’s Collection – bought by George IV for 1000 guineas in 1817. Dou’s reputation (and prices) were then still high. He gave tremendous value. He attended closely to the play of light as it came through a window or was thrown out by a candle. He rendered the textures of wood, metal, fabric ...”

“... down from precedent to precedent until they are nearly flat. Her theory of monarchy is that of Walter Bagehot, the Victorian journalist and banker, still believed in by Mr St John-Stevas. She even refers in more than one place to ‘St Bagehot’, which I fear reflects the uncritical adoration this smart performer received in academic quarters in the ...”

“... Mitt Romney has now joined Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale in the political void that awaits any rejected American presidential nominee who doesn’t care to linger into senatorial senescence. Dole appeared in adverts for Viagra. Dukakis has been a public transport activist. Mondale, in 2002, at the age of 74, ran an 11-day campaign for his old Minnesota Senate seat after Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash ...”

“... in the just discovered oilfields of East Texas. Among those who followed in his footsteps were the George Bushes, father and son, both of whom bought oil leases in the hope of generating an unstoppable flow of cash. In The Bush Tragedy, Jacob Weisberg shows how Bush family traits explain some of George W.’s tactics and ...”

“... among the Texas oil barons especially. So LBJ persuaded one of the old Southern bulls, Senator Walter George (Georgia) to put up his own constitutional amendment, still strongly conservative but not quite conservative enough to keep the Republicans united, thus ensuring that a Democratic initiative took centre stage and knocked Bricker out. His next ...”

“... nor was he tempted four years later, when he had a clear lead over his anti-war challenger George McGovern. Only in 1976 – when Nixon’s post-resignation successor Gerald Ford found himself languishing 33 points behind the challenger, Jimmy Carter – did an incumbent president have sufficient incentive to address the limitations of the 1934 ...”

“... a menu of ‘Primary Colors Specials’, including Lasagne di Paul Begalanese and Pork Chop George Stephen-applesauce. There’s a copy prominently displayed in the new books section of the White House library, and 742,000 have been shipped to bookstores to meet the demand. It’s number one on the New York Times bestseller list; North American ...”

“... Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale have presented the American electorate with as clear an ideological choice as any set of Presidential candidates in the 20th century. The two men disagree fundamentally on their prescriptions for the economy, their approaches to national defence, their views of foreign policy, their stances on social issues ...”

“... particularly bizarre in witnessing a figure who might have stepped out of the pages of Sir Walter Scott or Bulwer Lytton stirring a cup of tea with a spoon. It produced a kind of chronological shock which one would receive upon entering a drawing-room in Mayfair and meeting a Crusader armed to all points, or, the other way about, if one were to ...”

“... he read what you would expect a clever young man to read – the French symbolist poets, Stefan George, Rilke, Wedekind, Nietzsche – but he was also interested in street cries and fairground songs, whose rhythms found their way into his earliest ballads. When war broke out he was attracted by the idea of heroic sacrifice, and the first money he earned ...”

“... Two characters in pursuit of their author: such are George Neville and Witter Bynner, two chunks of raw material, anxious to tell the world about their cook. George Neville went to school with D.H. Lawrence and supposed himself the ‘original’ of George Saxton in The White Peacock: in his memoir he congratulates himself upon his useful contribution to Lawrence’s conception of true manliness ...”

“... As marriages of convenience go, few can have turned out less conveniently than that of George IV and Caroline of Brunswick. The couple brought out the worst in each other, and there was a great deal to bring out, for among the few things they had in common were obstinacy, irresponsibility and an almost total lack of self-control ...”

“... favoured Minimalist sculptors such as Donald Judd and Dan Flavin and installation artists such as Walter de Maria and James Turrell, and certainly the early projects underwritten by Dia, from permanent exhibitions in New York City to massive earthworks in the American desert, were grand. Among the best known is The Lightning Field, a vast grid of 400 ...”

“... novel? Here’s a beginning, with apologies to Sarah Waters and Michel Faber (and a nod to George MacDonald Fraser): London, 1860. November. A pea-souper billowing up from the flotsam bobbing in the Thames. The gas lamps already blearing. Good things of day begin to drowse. The rookeries are emptying, and their birds of prey making wing to the West ...”

“... same collection has been published under the title On Stories. This is equally valid, since what Walter Hooper has usefully brought together is a score of essays and reviews in which Lewis outlines his theory of fiction and affords commentaries both on his own individual romances and on related depictions of imaginary regions and societies as varied as The ...”