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“... for the would-be popular biographer is evident in his entry in the Concise DNB: Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-1895), man of science; studied at Charing Cross Hospital; announced, 1845, discovery of the layer of cells in root sheath of hair which now bears his name; MB London, 1845; made assistant surgeon on HMS Rattlesnake 1846-50, investigations relating to ...”

“... that Chaucer’s support was by this time worth soliciting, and points to failed attempts by Henry IV to recruit Christine de Pisan; Pearsall thinks Henry may not even have noticed. In the same way Strohm would like to see ‘Lak of Stedfastnesse’ not just as the tissue of literary commonplaces it is, but also as ...”

“... One of the earliest and most prolific of this generation of more detached historians of labour is Henry Pelling. From his early account of the Origins of the Labour Party to his histories of trade-unionism, the Labour Party and the Communist Party, all models of compression and precision, he has supplied essential works of reference for anyone embarking on ...”

“... in the first term, was largely a third Bill Clinton term: Rahm Emanuel, Lawrence Summers, Tom Donilon, Leon Panetta, John Podesta and Hillary Clinton were called back and held over. The interlude of subsequent personal enrichment by Clinton, trading on her prestige and inside knowledge, has drawn attention in recent days, after the revelation of her ...”

“... those who, like me, brought up on Arthur Machen, John Buchan, Rosemary Sutcliff, Mary Renault and Henry Treece, not to mention H.P. Lovecraft, got the wrong idea a long time ago and have been reluctant to abandon it. The wrong idea is the ‘widely held belief that the ancient pre-Christian religions of Europe … had in some form and by some definition ...”

“... for in a letter written c.1599 we find his own nephew describing him as ‘that degenerate rogue Tom Drury’. He was the third son of Robert Drury of Hawstead, Suffolk, and Audrey née Rich, the daughter of Richard, Lord Rich, a former Lord Chancellor. He was born on 8 May 1551. Thirteen years older than Marlowe, he was in his early forties when he became ...”

“... man in his later fifties whom I’ve never met before but whose face is almost familiar. ‘Tom, meet the Reverend William Haslett,’ he says. It isn’t one of his jokes. But the Reverend Haslett isn’t descended from the Reverend Hazlitt’s family, though his neat elegant face reminds me a bit of the master critic’s. There is no connection except ...”

“... compared to them; while his devoted mother and aunt gave a picture of him to his first biographer, Tom Moore, which insisted that ‘the friends he was entangled with pushed his destruction forward, screening themselves behind his valuable character.’ Stella Tillyard is the author of the excellent study Aristocrats, the first of a historical trilogy in which ...”

“... career has been expertly promoted by his agents and various publishers. His second novel, Peeping Tom (1984), was well received – both here and in America, which is a notoriously hard market for the English comic novelist to crack. (Changing Places and Stanley’s Women, two of the funniest novels ever written, were initially turned down by a series of US ...”

“... out of an instinct for self-preservation: having seen, by chance, a couple of older teenagers, Tom Yew and Debby Crombie, having sex in the woods, he considers telling his friend Dean. But: The chain of gossip laid itself out link by link. I’d tell Moran. Moran’d tell his sister Kelly. Kelly’d tell Pete Redmarley’s sister Ruth. Ruth Redmarley’d ...”

“... have been quite so vehement in more relaxed conditions? Would he, for instance, have included Henry Green’s Party Going in his 99 if this ‘carefully wrought poem’ had been favoured by the BMC? Probably not. Thus, Kingsley Amis’s Anti-Death League more or less has to be preferred to Take a girl like you, Iris Murdoch’s The Bell to her The ...”

“... Thierry of Chartres, himself recalling Plato. But many years before Alan or Thierry, the Emperor Henry III, dealing with a group of Czech sea-lawyers, had told them brusquely: ‘The law has a nose of wax, as they say in the vulgar, and the king a hand of iron.’ Henry was not recalling Plato, he was remembering a popular ...”

“... Quatermain sequence – which ran to 18 books – is bound, however, to remember the figure of Sir Henry Curtis, Bt. the English Victorian quasi-Viking whom Haggard carefully manoeuvred into situation after situation where he could fulfil the Dasent fantasy and fight, axe in hand and made-in-Birmingham mail-coat belted on, in blameless battle against ...”

“... of Irishman in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter’ it was – as Tom Dunne argues forcefully in his valuable new study of the ideas of their most famous publicist, Wolfe Tone – because only such a ‘cordial union’ could form an effective counterpoise to ‘the weight of English influence in the government of this ...”

“... encouraging. But Mary Ward was used to the magisterial arrogance of the Arnold men. Her father, Tom Arnold, had demolished the prosperity of his family and the happiness of his wife by his conversions and unconversions and reconversions to and from the Catholic faith. He took small interest in the upbringing of his oldest and most unruly daughter – ‘A ...”