“... not by his own countrymen, but by ‘a group of armed jabbering foreigners’. Our hapless English hunter is forced to take a crash course in a strange language. First, he learns the word ‘prisun’; soon after, he’ll hear the words ‘foreste’, ‘rent’, ‘justise’. Uneasy in an occupied land, he will find language turned against him, his ...”

“... towards quietism and silence. In 1920, after a career lasting half a century, the Grand Old Man of English Letters writes to Alfred Noyes: ‘ “What a fool one must have been to write for such a public!” is the inevitable reflection at the end of one’s life.’ But there is, necessarily, more to Hardy than this, and he was always torn between the impulse ...”

“... men and women – including those perhaps not so plain persons who are professors of English or History or Physics – as vaguely ludicrous. On the one hand, academic philosophy is centrally concerned with such all-pervasive concepts as those of truth, rationality and goodness: and who, whether in other academic disciplines or in the transactions ...”

“... Angevin lands now suffered the misfortune of successive rule by young Henry’s younger brothers, Richard and John, which in the end left the English monarchy reduced to lordship in twin island dominions, thwarted at least for the moment in its ambitions to be a territorial power in mainland Europe. It is easy to moralise ...”

“... of Suffolk.’ There was little between Betjeman and Pevsner when it came to what they admired in English architecture – they preferred the low-key and an absence of grandeur. ‘Betjeman’s brand of evocation,’ Harries says, ‘is more about churchgoing than about the churches themselves, and tends to turn the focus on the observer as much as the object ...”

“... to elicit groans than guilt. Lindsay thought more subtle approaches were timid (and, of course, ‘English’). At the start of my career I might have agreed, but even when I was in Beyond the Fringe (which I’m sure he didn’t much care for) it seemed to me that laughter had to come into the equation. And however manfully Gavin Lambert defends him, it very ...”

“... Stuart England in two distinctive ways. Her narrative starts with one foreign fleet in the English Channel – Philip II’s failed Armada of 1588 – and ends a century later with another: William of Orange’s invasion flotilla, which brought about the ‘Glorious Revolution’. Both 1588 and 1688 were moments of intense insecurity and both were ...”

“... in the latest techniques in warfare. The army and its cannon made short work of a number of English border castles and towers. In Northumberland, James awaited the English army, led by Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey. Though apparently possessing advantages in ground, equipment and supplies, James allowed himself to be ...”

“... From the 1970s early modern revisionists such as Conrad Russell and John Morrill showed that the English Civil War did not arise out of a long-running constitutional dispute centred on the rise of Parliament. Parliaments (the plural is significant) served as points of contact between the centre and the counties and were largely dominated by humdrum local ...”

“... The​ skills of the three top Soviet spies of the 20th century – Richard Sorge, Leopold Trepper and Ignace Poretsky/Reiss (better known as Ludwik) – remain unmatched. Sorge has always attracted particular attention. Ian Fleming called him the ‘most formidable spy in history’; other admirers included John le Carré, Tom Clancy and General MacArthur ...”

“... politically Whig (or SDP, or at least bien-pensant), nonetheless regard the inherited version of English history as a conspiracy wrought by a long line of Whig (and Protestant) writers. Products of a period of national decline, they are puzzled by the idea of progress and unimpressed by the evolution and the uniqueness of Britain’s ...”

“... a play, and a lot of short stories. We can add that he is Belgian, a masterful mangler of the English language, always right, generally insufferable. Finney and Ustinov easily top the charts for the insufferable aspect, and Suchet is surely the most memorable and interesting incarnation, in part because he played the role on television for so long (from ...”

“... someone is filled with anger we can say – or we could say, if we spoke in the language of 1980s English-teaching textbooks – that their blood boils and they have to let off steam before they flip their lid. The assumption is that conceptual metaphors like this reflect and constrain a person’s way of thinking. It’s all a great game, and the spy ...”

“... and Barbara Cartland. Yet from the Restoration in 1660 until the early 20th century, the only English monarch who was both male and monogamous was probably King George III. Put the other way, this means that from Nell Gwyn to Mrs Keppel (and beyond), the courtesan was an integral part of royal history. But while much is known about such women as the ...”

“... explained to his mother. What he did not tell her was how he had landed such a grand invitation. Richard Ingleby cannot tell us either, but Kahn was the first of many men and women to be charmed by Wood. His good looks and ‘friendliness’, the quality that people singled out as the key to his appeal, enabled him to drift with apparent inevitability to the ...”