“... the scene here in 2000 BC, saying that people are looting and killing and nobody knows who the king is. So you see, nothing is new.’ Founded in 762 by the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur, Baghdad, situated on the Tigris and close to the Euphrates, was built on the site of older settlements that benefited from the region’s legendary fertility. Herodotus ...”

“... of Louis XVI felt they had been invited to become involved in national politics. By 1789 the king was bankrupt, and the normal avenues of reform exhausted; with the crown and the nobility at loggerheads, the state’s insolvency could not be fixed by fiscal austerity or constitutional tinkering. Instead the ...”

“... worked to consolidate the British presence in the Adriatic, training Greek mercenary regiments for King Ferdinando of the Two Sicilies and deploying them to fight brigands in Puglia – where brigandage was closely associated with subversive politics. When the Sicilian revolution broke out in 1820, Church – now leading the Neapolitan army – was a prime ...”

“... the basis of official records, for instance, is like using Hello! as a source for the history of Charles and Diana. In the chronicles, in the superscriptions of royal documents and in almost all the portraits, Isabella and her husband appear as united equals. The iconography is strewn with knots and yokes, images of connubial bliss and perfect union. ‘Each ...”

“... instead of my feet. My brothers hadn’t the same advantage.’ He hated disorder. His father, Charles Lutyens, was a horse painter of decreasing reputation (Lutyens had no pictures in his house when he first married so as not to have to hang any of his father’s) who became eccentric (dunking roast potatoes in tea) and parsimonious (using newspapers as ...”

“... it. There was a lot of glitter, hand sanitiser, and a samovar of tea. The show would open at the King’s Theatre in less than a week, yet the atmosphere was all laughter and promise.I have a thing for pantomime. I’ll spare you my theory that the best of it is better than King Lear and The Cherry Orchard put ...”

“... by the picture – which, as Unton put it, ‘did draw more speech and affection’ from the king than all his ‘best arguments and eloquence’.Novel techniques helped to intensify the effect of the portrait miniature. Hilliard used powdered gold to create a background of flames behind a lovestruck young man – the flames would have seemed to flicker ...”

“... convinced that item # 322 in Moore’s Checklist is spurious: that is, A History of the Wars of Charles XII. Their declared grounds are twofold: first, its totally unprofessional manner (‘everything in it bespeaks the amateur writer’); and second, its lack of general ideas (‘so intellectually vacant a chronicle’). Both views are critically ...”

“... and also the later, cello-centred set which he was financially obliged to write for the cellist king of Prussia. But people who notice this usually forget that neither early nor late in his life did Mozart make any complaint about the labour it cost him to create masterpieces in the closely allied string-quintet form, with a second viola enriching ...”

“... orchestrated books. Many readers today will be shaky about the shifting historical background. King Carol, Madame Lupescu, the Iron Guard, Antonescu – who were they? It is necessary that something should be said about their roles and attitudes, but how can this be done without long, boring explanations? Well, it helps a great deal that the ...”

“... full French control over the colony. The French forces, commanded by Napoleon’s brother-in-law Charles Leclerc, had some initial success. They captured Louverture, and shipped him back to France, where he died in captivity in 1803. But an epidemic of yellow fever killed many of the Europeans (Leclerc died of it) and opened the way to a black victory. On 1 ...”

“... little ease’ for his disobedience to its commands. Witherley applied to the court of King’s Bench in London for a writ of habeas corpus so that they might investigate the reason for his detention. The court issued the writ, but nothing happened. So it sent a second writ addressed to the jailer, Hunnyngs, along with an attachment for contempt ...”

“... effortlessly since birth from one favourable literary atmosphere to another. His father had heard Charles Dickens read when he was six, had helped to found Granta and furiously defended the Liberal cause at the Punch table. John himself had been at Eton with Alan Pryce-Jones, Anthony Powell, Eric Blair and Cyril Connolly, who, we are told, stood at the door ...”

“... Puritans like Cartwright and Perkins (though Dr Kendall would not call him a Puritan), later King James I, all agreed on the essentials of theology. This orthodoxy was challenged by Laudians in the 1630s, by sectaries in the Forties and Fifties. By the end of the century, Calvinism was no longer the intellectual force it had been. It was not stressed by ...”

“... must have informed his thinking when he came to consider the authority, rights and duties of a king, but the commonplace book isn’t a record of a mind made up; it shows someone sifting information and weighing evidence.McDowell reads Milton’s early writings as a programme of poetic apprenticeship in which he tried out a wide range of genres: poems on ...”