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“... In 1735​ , the Duke of Richmond was in search of a sloth bear. He took delivery of an animal but wasn’t happy with what had arrived. ‘I wish indeed it had been the Sloath that had been sent me, for that is the most curious animal I know, butt this is nothing butt a common black bear, which I do not know what to do with, for I have five of them already,’ he wrote to Hans Sloane, who had acted as his buying agent ...”

“... the word was with God; at the end, a passage in Revelation describes an angel appearing to St John holding an open book and instructing him to eat it: ‘it will make your stomach bitter, but it will be as sweet as honey in your mouth.’ In the 12th-century Glossa Ordinaria, the standard set of medieval biblical commentaries, some passages of the Bible ...”

“... John Lennon gave his famous interview to Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone magazine at the end of 1970, a few days before the release of the most important solo-Beatle record, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Rolling Stone published the interview early the following year, with the album already in the shops ...”

“... Democratic Progressive Party, a new director of the Palace Museum is chosen. Lin Jeng-yi took up the position early last year when Tsai Ing-wen was elected as Taiwan’s first female president. It is Lin’s job to explain to the Democratic Progressive Party, and to the Taiwanese, why they should be responsible for a vast collection of Chinese ...”

“... Among the illustrations in this book is a painting by John Closterman of the Marlborough family which hangs today in Blenheim Palace. On its right-hand side, as convention dictates, sits the head of the family, John Churchill, at the time of the painting, first Earl of Marlborough ...”

“... of mixing them together, as in a mouthful of beef and plum pudding. In England, the aristocracy took up the new fashion, and imported French cooks along with French tailors, French dancing masters, French musicians and French language tutors. Before too long these trends provoked a ferocious patriotic reaction. Novelists, dramatists and journalists all ...”

“... the Home Secretary. Shortly before he was due to be flown out of the UK en route for New York he took an overdose and died. With this may be compared the case of Mark Hosenball, the American journalist whom the Home Office decided should be deported as a security risk. Hosenball challenged the decision on the ground that there had been a breach of the rules ...”

“... units, under the direction of the station manager, a 35-year-old engineer named Victor Brukhanov, took up much of the Seventies. Delays, due mainly to delivery failures, meant that the first unit went on line late in September 1977, the second over a year later – a few months before the accident at Three Mile Island, itself a cause for celebration in Soviet ...”

“... One might as well say that Laurel and Hardy were provincial comics. The growth of Andy Dalziel took place in metaphors of which Wodehouse would have been proud. At first only an ex-rugby player run to slabby fat, Dalziel began to burgeon in Ruling Passion (1973), after an antique dealer called Etherege, a diabetic arrested by Dalziel while injecting ...”

“... He christened the first ‘Kilseen’, a tease on her acting abilities, but she and their friends took pleasure in the nickname and she certainly loved him. Constance was what David Cecil calls ‘a full-blooded woman’ who soon started an affair with her principal man and allowed Max to slip gracefully away. The lady he eventually married, Florence ...”

“... settled notions of the uniqueness and universality of space and time. Not, of course, that people took an entirely conservative attitude towards their everyday co-ordinates. Even in 1905, the passengers on a steamship to Australia did not try to carry with them, all the way from Britain, the exact moment of twelve noon, or the direction of ...”

“... commercial and transport infrastructure – in the relatively painless way that jet airliners took over from propeller-driven planes, made by the same manufacturers and using the same airports and labour force. The competition to create a state-of-the-art electric car for the next century began in the Eighties with another race. General Motors acquired a ...”

“... much verbatim, when I finally ‘awoke’, a good while after it ended). On this occasion, it took a while for the fascination to come. I have always had a difficult relationship with sleep; a lifelong and impatient insomniac, I have spent whole nights not even trying to rest, but reading, watching films, or going for long walks. When I did sleep, my ...”

“... who were kindly invited to the Sorbonne to discuss their hobby, but the history of real French took place elsewhere.’ This mirrored the disdain with which the French of England was viewed by some medieval writers. A 12th-century biographer of Thomas à Becket, writing in Canterbury, assured his audience that ‘Mis languages est bons, car en France fui ...”

“... for John Berger It was called a hand as proof, spotless and caught       like watching a false cuff, kind of. It is a pepper mill or a path like a vision along to the glass door. Her will       and the men, hesitating, end up like a house fire. A tight fit bolts and lands in such a way. The shape of hers       seems to me to lament mere shade ...”