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“... in some sense be a man. ‘We all know women with a strong dash of the masculine temperament,’ Edward Carpenter writes in this stereotypical vein, ‘and we all know men whose almost feminine sensibility and intuition seem to belie their bodily form.’ The fallacy of ‘intrinsic’ gender – of gender being not a social construction but a biological ...”

“... Rome (so, probably, encouraging the twinning of statue and building). The Emperor Commodus, it is said, looked back more warmly to Nero and found propaganda value in giving the Colossus another makeover, inserting his own features in the face and dressing it up as his favourite deity, Hercules. But, with the fall of Commodus, it was soon back as a sun ...”

“... office. ‘Just her presence meant that there was no hanky-panky, nobody cut corners,’ Johnson said. ‘It wasn’t that she knew anything about buildings, but it was like having the crown prince present.’ But Lambert wasn’t the sort of person happy just to supervise. When a model needed to be built, she offered to help: the offer was rejected but she ...”

“... is a snip at £18.The abbey’s association with royalty and power is woven into its fabric. Edward the Confessor built the first abbey, next to his palace at Westminster, in 1042, and William the Conqueror became the first king to be crowned in it, on Christmas Day 1066. Henry II, fancying a saint in the family, bought ...”

“... Jean​ Cooke liked painting her sofa. ‘I kept painting that sofa,’ she said. ‘It dominated my life. People came and sat down on it and I painted them.’ In Sofas Galore (c.1980), two figures recline at opposite ends of a pale peach Chesterfield, its creases and buttons lovingly re-created in paint. The two figures are the same person: Jason, Cooke’s son ...”

“... unwelcome to Henry, and led, as he saw it, to a break in church history. During the reign of Edward I, ‘the bishops of Saint Andrews and Glasgow were not as they now be archbishops, but recognised the province of our archbishop of York, which extended over all that country.’ Is it any wonder that the Venetian historian Sabellicus ‘calleth Scotland ...”

“... in 1935 and then remade in 1951. Wilder, in 1959, was thinking mainly of the original, which he said was ‘deliriously bad’. Coming from him this was a compliment rather than a complaint, and he certainly found in the old work the basic premise of the new one: two male musicians join an all-woman band. In the earlier film this was one of their many ...”

“... seen as someone who intends no major change of course. In a televised interview on 11 January, he said he would deal with Israel and Palestine in the manner of the Clinton and Bush administrations. The unhappy message of his recent utterances has been reconciliation without truth; and reconciliation, above all, for Americans. This preference for ...”

“... with many whom, in his day, he despised: Humbert Wolfe, for example, and Vita Sackville-West and Edward Shanks. Can it be that he belongs in such forgotten company? Is his a just neglect? Reading the life, one must conclude that if he indeed had a genuine poetic gift, he had other qualities of mind and character that worked against that gift, and that his ...”

“... the shape of double-page ‘picture essays’ devoted to particular topics – though it should be said that Campbell and Wormald have themselves composed nine out of 19 of these. The main text is aimed at a fairly wide readership, but it also raises far-reaching issues. All three authors are men who have made – and are continuing to make – substantial ...”

“... count for much with this unimpressionable ex-cabaret dancer – un serpent qui danse, the poet said, using an image not highly regarded by the girl who knows perfectly well how snakes move. Nor is she willing to accept without comment the exotic heritage he foists on her – la langoureuse Asie et la brûlante Afrique (all that) – knowing herself, in ...”

“... train station – a location suitable to the memory of one who was always in transition. Janet said passionately how much she disliked Oxford – surprising myself, who still loved Oxford with a devotion that might have seemed simple-minded even to me if it had not been so iridescent. I was impressed by both the intensity and the sophistication of ...”

“... prophets, it encouraged those Welsh who had felt exiles in their own land since the victories of Edward I to pursue claims made as the original ‘Britons’. Glyn Dŵr had little trouble in linking himself with the long line of Welsh messiahs, including Arthur, who offered to expel the English and regain control of the whole island of Britain. The revolt ...”

“... worked out all right in the end – as propagandists for England’s providential destiny always said it would. Episodes of apparent divine preservation – the wrecking of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and the failure of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 – were exploited for all they were worth. This rhetoric masked the pragmatic manoeuvres taking place behind the ...”

“... That wonderful Edward Coke,’ wrote the great Maitland, ‘masterful, masterless man.’ Others prefer the judgment of the Australian judge and historian James Spigelman: Coke’s mind ‘was so narrow and unsubtle, so incapable of jettisoning detail, so often inconsistent, that no one has ever speculated that he wrote the works of Shakespeare ...”