“... and services on one side and family apartments on the other.The Renaissance finally arrived during Elizabeth’s reign. She was less greedy for buildings than her father and was a patron by proxy, shrewdly encouraging ambitious courtiers to build glamorous houses for her entertainment, rather than paying for them herself. When she gave Kenilworth Castle to her ...”

“... decency? In a series of articles that first appeared in the New Yorker as Watergate unfolded, Elizabeth Drew confesses a hardened journalist’s shock at ‘the contempt for everyone – the public, the Congress, their colleagues, each other’ the transcripts reveal. ‘He seems to be trying to be candid, but he hasn’t had much experience in that ...”

“... escape from a home where he was stripped of authority and placed under constant surveillance. As Elizabeth Foyster remarks in her assiduously researched, crisply written biography, ‘nobody was interested in the grievances of a low-born French speaker when they stood opposed to the words of an honourable English nobleman and his family.’ Not long after ...”

“... the rift could be summarised in 1066 and All That terms as Queen Mary, the queen mother and Queen Elizabeth, right but repulsive; the Windsors, wrong but romantic. What he found most unforgivable about the royal family was their lack of taste. His notes record a constant assault on his sensibilities from their sheer dreariness. Sandringham ‘had to be seen ...”

“... if never completed, transformation in the 1920s and 1930s. This transformation is at the heart of Elizabeth McGuire’s engrossing book. She is not the first to approach the history of the Soviet Union and Mao’s China in tandem, yet Red at Heart offers a highly original exploration of Chinese communism, putting the experiences and emotions of the young ...”

“... Mary’s death, he immediately looked into the possibility of winning the hand of her half-sister, Elizabeth. Don John of Austria, Philip’s illegitimate half-brother, later to achieve immortality at Lepanto and the son of a scullery maid at a hotel in Regensburg where Charles had once stayed, also fancied his chances at bringing England back to the True ...”

“... anyone who needs reminding how much they have contributed to its literature. Simone de Beauvoir, Elizabeth Bowen, Marguerite Duras, Martha Gellhorn, Natalia Ginzburg, Shirley Hazzard, Doris Lessing and many other women writers are here (but not Anne Frank or Hannah Arendt), and among the more unexpected selections are the reminiscences of Soviet ...”

“... the family, her mother Dora had run a dancing school to make a living, and so had her older sister Elizabeth; Isadora learned dancing, teaching and performing simultaneously, during her earliest years. In the 1890s, all four sisters and brothers appeared in dance concerts up and down the California coast, creating their own material; and this helped to form ...”

“... unveiled in the posthumous edition of Vive Moi! – long-running affairs with the writers Elizabeth Bowen and Honor Tracy and the American socialite Alene Erlanger – add to the dishonesty of his public image. Yet O’Faolain’s claim to heroism lies not in any righteous constancy but precisely in his inconsistency. Faced with the insistence of the ...”

“... to an heiress for four years in order to travel the world, which he could not ask a wife to do. Elizabeth Longford, in her introduction, describes this as a characteristic blend of ‘cold calculation and sensitive consideration’. The book consists of extracts from Curzon’s Tales of Travel, Russia in Central Asia and Leaves from a Viceroy’s Notebook ...”

“... see Mrs Elton leafing through A la Carte as a substitute for actual cooking, and Emma consulting Elizabeth David for instruction in the matter of marrow-bones. Wherever the daily human comedy of manners is deployed as a cloak for our brute, indispensable appetites and satisfactions, food and drink must be present or, if absent, must expect to have their ...”

“... view which is much more congenial to him. James I in particular is not a favourite of his. Unlike Elizabeth, James relished Lord Henry Howard’s ‘unctuous brand of flattery’. He also had a penchant for beautiful young men. Ashton makes no moral judgment about their gender, but he is very critical of the fact that, unlike ...”

“... he sets out to educate with his favourite records and books, beginning with The Secret Garden. Elizabeth Jane Howard does a good job where she can feel as confident in her values as Cecil Roberts. She enters with zest into the details of hairdressing or Gavin’s mother’s cooking. She is no less confident with good, worthy sentiments that wouldn’t ...”

“... and in her British Council guide, Iris Murdoch. Her analysis is extended and continued here, in Elizabeth Dipple’s very good book, which traces the whole course of development from Under the Net to Nuns and Soldiers. Professor Dipple uses Iris Murdoch’s philosophical essays to illuminate the novels with perceptiveness and sensitivity to conceptual ...”

“... is recorded that Mrs Newton Crosland (1812-95) was reading fluently at the age of three. Both Mary Elizabeth (1806-1907) and Sara Coleridge (1802-52) are on record as being precocious: but Sara apparently had mastered several languages, including Latin and Greek, by the age of 11. Writing novels was part of this pattern of precocious attainment. ...”