“... convicted of wilfully producing a loaded crossbow with intent to use it to injure the person of her majesty, contrary to the Treason Act of 1842. Perhaps more important, as the authors recount, the 1696 Treason Act, following hard on the heels of the Bill of Rights, set up a series of procedural hedges, not cut down until 1945, which made treason ...”

“... writer, a ‘notorious and shameless poof’ married a street woman and fathered two sons with her, both of whom followed in their father’s professional footsteps. A male prostitute known as Fair Eliza kept a fancy woman in Westminster who, McKenna writes, did ‘not scruple to live upon the fruits of his monstrous avocation’. Female sex workers might ...”

“... of a diary may not be the same as the rational justification. Beatrice Webb, for example, used her diary for deep introspection. Hugh Dalton used his sometimes as a private seminar, for working out new ideas, on other occasions as a kind of mirror, in order to practise a political pose, or as a psychic release, a place to express feelings of frustration or ...”

“... the glorious letter he wrote to the queen at the end of January. Its immediate purpose was to ask Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament in order to prevent Remainers from frustrating Brexit. That might seem chutzpah enough, but his follow-up was more ineffable still: ‘Your Majesty’s Ministers were gravely in error and ...”

“... On the wall behind him: a colour portrait of the Queen of England – 007 at the service of Her Majesty.The sentences have the involuntary, palpable beauty of snowflakes. He follows Rilke’s almost Oriental prescription that one must have seen and experienced many things in life, and then forgotten them. Certainly, it’s hard to imagine a less ...”

“... blighted rather than fostered scholarship. ‘Dame Isobel’s well-meaning effort to keep alive her husband’s flame has had the perverse effect of threatening to extinguish it.’ In particular, it has meant that those with whom Cripps served have all had their ‘versions’ published long before. Of the big five of the 1945 Labour Government ...”

“... translation of Murasaki’s Diary renders one passage by the words: ‘This is not to say that her women are always so genteel; if they forget themselves they can come out with the most indiscrete verses.’ Perhaps, in becoming conversant with Japanese to a degree he makes plain even to me who know not a syllable of the language, Richard Bowring has ...”

“... out, and stunk out by a virtuoso farting guerrilla attached to the ERP underground army.   Her address was designed to be simple and moving.   ‘To those of you who have lost your children in this disaster, I can only say...’   It rumbles out over the mikes on TV... my God, what a sound. The Queen turns pale but continues:   ‘... that ...”

“... with foreign Catholic powers conspiring to invade England and often also plotting to assassinate her queen. Alford’s assertion that a ‘fundamental assumption of Elizabeth’s government was that no English Catholic could ever quite be trusted’ is oversimplified – some Catholics served the queen well – but it may reflect Cecil’s own ...”

“... In 1871, when Queen Victoria was in the tenth year of her widowhood, and when even the great British public was becoming increasingly irritated by her continued seclusion at Windsor, Osborne and Balmoral, a young, clever, radical MP named George Otto Trevelyan published a pamphlet which had the effrontery to ask: ‘What does she do with it?’ Where, Trevelyan wanted to know, was all the money going which the Queen was paid by the Government for the sole purpose of maintaining the duties and dignities of her position as head of state? Instead of being spent as it should have been, on court ceremonial, public appearances and regal display, he believed it was being improperly applied to the creation of a new and essentially private royal fortune ...”

“... I suppose some bucks were made (think Felix Dennis: distribution manager of Oz and now higher than Her Majesty on the richest people list; and Ed Victor – ex-editor of Ink and currently mega-agent), but only by a few, and generally not until life had got more sensible again. Some made writing careers for themselves which developed smoothly enough from ...”

“... file were consulted, however, they had a different view. Their choice fell, almost unanimously, on Her Majesty the Queen, and they made it clear that if she were not invited, they intended to strike and to picket the ceremony. On this occasion, at least, Ken Livingstone had no difficulty in acceding to the wishes of the rank and file. But the incident ...”

“... and orders kept piling up. At the time of his surgery, Wedgwood styled himself ‘Potter to Her Majesty’ Queen Charlotte and was on the way to becoming one of the most famous manufacturers in Britain. He quickly began investigating the wooden prosthetics that would allow him to get back to work at his Staffordshire factory, resuming a life spent ...”

“... a vaulted corridor (Broughton Castle) and bursts in on a sleeping lady-in-waiting and demands her chamber pot. ‘Do it, England,’ he adjures himself. ‘Do it.’ But time and the budget put paid to much of the rest: no back corridors thronged with courtiers, still primping and titivating themselves as they hurry down to the opening concert; no shot of ...”

“... it should have been banned for ever from public use. PETE: Do you know, at this very moment, Her Majesty is probably exercising the royal prerogative. DUD: What’s that then, Pete? PETE: Don’t you know the royal prerogative? It’s a wonderful animal, Dud. It’s a legendary beast, half bird, half fish, half unicorn, and it’s being ...”