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“... his college should have a portrait of its most celebrated living alumnus. He commissioned Henry William Pickersgill – an apprentice Spitalfields silk-weaver turned Royal Academician – to produce a full-length oil painting of Wordsworth in an appropriately sublime setting, and in the early autumn of 1832 Pickersgill made the journey to Rydal ...”

“... gets a good article in the London Review of Books. The Spectator has never, since the days of Mr Gladstone, made any claims to take literature seriously. The first three BLM volumes record the origins and heyday of the reviewing (long, serious, ‘good’) whose demise Wilson laments. It begins with the Edinburgh and Quarterly. These were long and serious ...”

“... because few knew he had a squeaky voice, but several other on-field heroes – A.E. Stoddart, William Scotton, Arthur Shrewsbury – killed themselves after their careers ended, unable to cope with the loss of fame and/or money. Audiences demanded swagger in music too, forcing that poor ambitious provincial Edward Elgar to respond with ‘Land of Hope and ...”

“... by Leonardo DiCaprio, arrives in town. He is an army veteran and has come to work with his uncle, William Hale (De Niro). His first job is as a taxi driver. It comes as a real shock when we see and hear him blandly giving instructions for murder as if he was telling someone where to put the furniture. We knew he was grumpy from the first shot of him, but he ...”

“... behind straggly beards and whiskers with sad, rheumy eyes – Matthew Arnold, Carlyle, Swinburne, William Morris, Leslie Stephen, Tennyson – giving off a steamy despair. They had heard the melancholy long withdrawing roar of faith, and they did not like the sound of it. Today relegated to a wall in a side room, these literary men seem to take second billing ...”

“... after the death of Canning in 1827 were the two posts to become clearly separated (and, even so, Gladstone later filled both for a time). In the 18th century, then, given that the prime minister was usually in the Commons, they had a robust answer to the personal and institutional rivalry besetting many subsequent cabinets. There was no problem if the ...”

“... choice between the 79-year-old Lord Dundonald, who was tottering on the verge of insanity, and Sir William Parker, who himself thought he was a fraction past it at 73. Which left only Sir Charles Napier, a mere 67 but a hopeless alcoholic with a vile temper. The commander-in-chief was the 66-year-old Lord Raglan, who had lost an arm at Waterloo but had never ...”

“... the richest store of information. Two, the Gladstones and the Freuds, are investigated in detail. William Gladstone’s sister Helen was a misfit who rejected the obligations of female usefulness and became addicted to opiates. Her rebellion then took a religious turn, as she transferred the obedience she might have been expected to owe her male ...”

“... for money on teaching and journalism, particularly for the Philosophical Magazine, edited by William Francis (later of Taylor and Francis, the popular scientific publisher). Tyndall had been writing essays and poems for publication for years, but now discovered he had a great gift for clearly explaining new approaches to science. Francis liked him ...”

“... and benefit the polity. Delay was also thought to minimise the risk of subsequent repeal. In 1864 Gladstone claimed that was why ‘we always progress, never retrace our steps.’This was a conservative definition of progress. Parliament’s deliberative function was exercised by a social elite: MPs needed a substantial private income in the years before ...”

“... In 1828 Macaulay identified the press as ‘a Fourth Estate of the Realm’; by the 1850s, when William Russell was reporting from the Crimea for the Times and his editor, John Delane, was fulminating against the mismanagement of the war, nobody could argue with it. ‘This country is ruled by the Times,’ the Saturday Review declared. ‘We all know ...”

“... sharper outlines. Second-tier players have their moment in the limelight: the secretary of state William Seward drinks too much and blusters about invading Canada; the US ambassador Charles Francis Adams keeps a stiff and chilly distance from London society, managing to seem both unformed and overly formal; the Confederate envoy James Mason says ...”

“... and shapes.’ She has continued to admire ‘the classic purity’ of her aboriginal specimen, William Joyce. I had not thought of it before but she does make him sound rather like a spinning jenny. Up to now Rebecca West has written about all her spies with the coolness and precision of a collector: the passion which presumably motivates collectors is ...”

“... Stockmar. But the Crown Princess, Empress Frederick, was very far from being a proponent of a ‘Gladstone cabinet’ in Germany – which was what Bismarck accused her of being – and in this she was very much her father’s daughter. At the same time Bismarck was perfectly correct in denouncing her as a deliberate importer into Prussia of Coburg political ...”

“... die behind bars. In September, the nature of the struggle changed when the home secretary Herbert Gladstone, William Gladstone’s son, ordered a new policy of force-feeding. Women were pinned down while prison doctors rammed long tubes into their nostrils or down their throats. The tubes weren’t always cleaned ...”