“... Children, wrote to Enid Blyton to ask whether she would be willing to be interviewed about the best holiday she could remember. ‘Dear Mr Gamlin,’ Blyton wrote the next day. ‘Thank you for your nice letter. It all sounds very interesting but I ought to warn you of something you obviously don’t know, but which has been well known in the literary and ...”

“... tradition that Shakespeare acted the part of Hamlet’s ghostly father (first mentioned by Nicholas Rowe in 1709) adds force. The book opens with a brisk pair of essays by David Fallow and Michael Wood on the subject of his parents: John Shakespeare, born in about 1530, the son of a tenant farmer in the outlying village of Snitterfield, and Mary née ...”

“... the physical evidence of this overturning of the ‘natural’ order of things. Traditionally the best-provided Soviet city, it became one of the worst as farmers and suppliers consumed in their regions produce once ordered to be sent to the capital. The budget deficit now began to grow and grow. Less than 3 per cent of the GNP in 1986, it had jumped to 11 ...”

“... towards GPs, who must inevitably take a wider view of the health needs of their community. As Nicholas Timmins puts it in The Five Giants (1996), we now saw hospital ‘consultants sending GPs Christmas cards, not the other way around’. Second, Thatcher’s Health of the Nation plans, with targets set for cutting diseases such as breast cancer and heart ...”

“... local currency. ‘My ideas are very English. I’ve thrown in my lot with England. It’s the best country in the world.’ Such loyal self-deprecation is scarcely less suspect. The Crooked Timber of Humanity is more an elegant restatement than a substantial addition to his characteristic themes. Three quarters of the book consists of essays from the same ...”

“... himself, without the intervention of any compulsory restraint; and, since government, even in its best state, is an evil, the object principally to be aimed at is, that we should have as little of it, as the general peace of society will permit.’ The publication of such sentiments in February 1793, a few weeks after the execution of Louis XVI, seemed to ...”

“... in leather jackets, peddled Raworth. ‘Read Raworth and Harwood,’ they said. ‘They’re the best we have.’ And there they were, Tom Raworth and Lee Harwood, linked in a Penguin, like Ted Hughes and Thom Gunn before them, markers for a generation. So where did it all go wrong? (Not for the poets, for us.) Raworth’s first proper book, The Relation ...”

“... Even more prevalent were the ‘whistle-blowing’ denunciations (first identified as such in Nicholas Lampert’s Whistle-Blowing in the Soviet Union, 1985), in which ordinary citizens (usually not Communists) denounced their (usually Communist) bosses for abuses of power – embezzling, bullying of subordinates, nepotism or bribe-taking. In its Soviet ...”

“... from Chaucer’s ‘Prioress’s Tale’. The Virgin Mary – modelled by Jane – tends to St Nicholas, who had his throat cut by the Jews before miraculously returning to life.Furnishing the Red House inspired Morris to set up the Firm (it did not become Morris and Co. until 1875, when he bought out his founding partners). It initially traded on the ...”

“... Farnese an extreme example of a muscle man. It was indeed the language of the body which could best be studied in these famous exemplars: the taut athletic posture of the Borghese Warrior, the sensuous relaxation of the Barberini Faun, the ebbing life of the Dying Gladiator exemplified the expressive potentialities of the male nude, which greatly extended ...”

“... family. Sinclair offers a fetching portrayal of this world, dividing its genius between ‘the two best scalpers of their generation’: Nicholas Lane, a former rock musician who survives on cocaine, and Dryfeld, a figure who found his name in the Whitechapel Library. Without fixed abode or even substantial bodily form, Lane ...”

“... Sullivan, Gordon and DeVries all acknowledge debts, and which, for this reviewer, remains the best book on the subject. But the clarity can be deceptive. For the fact is that the record preserves not just one voice but many, and our reception is marred by interference. Sullivan starts from the premise that questions shape answers. (Marc Bloch said that a ...”

“... vigorously shaking their heads even as their mission head gave his blessing to it all. But the best-laid plans . . . It is unlikely that Mbeki paid attention to the detail of the administrative changes made by his SADC underlings, but a few of these were crucial. One was an amendment to the Public Order Act which removed the need to get police permission ...”

“... own random revenge. But the true mood of the British army was less hatred than angry frustration, best expressed by a graffiti exchange on a wall in Jerusalem described by Piers Brendon in The Decline and Fall of the British Empire (2007). Under the Zionist slogan ‘Tommy Go Home,’ one such Tommy replied: ‘I Wish I Fucking Well Could.’ These events are ...”

“... of living an ancient life. We do not know whether Hugh Latimer really said to his friend Nicholas Ridley, when the two were burned at Oxford in October 1555, ‘Be of good comfort, master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.’ Foxe claimed that he did ...”