“... that he related them afterwards as if he had seen or taken part in them.’ He had been Byron and Shakespeare, the prize-fighter Jack Randall (who kept a pub in Chancery Lane). Now, letter by letter, language was torn from him. He described his condition to the documentary historian Agnes Strickland: ‘They have cut off my head and picked out all the letters ...”

“... despite the fact that he admired Ulysses, went regularly to Stravinsky’s ballets and quoted Shakespeare and Keats. He was also a talented linguist. There was more than a trace of class snobbery in Bloomsbury’s view of Coward and, as social nuance was one of his principal themes, he must have been well aware of it. Even while she was a little ‘in ...”

“... Yet he was also the natural outsider in a scene that as well as Britten (born 1913), included William Walton (1902) and Lennox Berkeley (1903), with the reassuring presence of Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872) hovering over them all. Whether Tippett ever entered the pantheon, or even deserves to, remains an open question for some. His Concerto for Double ...”

“... the kingdom of England itself, but a large proportion testified to pious Anglo-Norman energy after William I’s conquest of England in 1066, resulting in the formation of a diverse range of communities whose distinctive ‘rules’ for communal life were an implied criticism of the monasteries that had gone before. Well-functioning monasteries constantly do ...”

“... and the vast majority of the other men and boys around at the time were Joseph, James, Thomas or William. Around 1850, however, the repertoire of names in regular use began to increase rapidly. As Gothic-looking steeples rose around the country, so medieval-sounding names crowded around the font: Arthur, Walter, Harold and Neville, Ethel, Edith and ...”

“... in fear of being forcibly circumcised. In pride of place is the portrait of Coryate engraved by William Hole; around its cartouche lounge a trio of bosomy courtesans, one of whom is shown vomiting over his head. Another illustration by Hole, inserted in the text, shows Coryate bowing in greeting to a famous Venetian courtesan, Margarita Emiliana. The ...”

“... perfect for private conversation … organised around a gargantuan walk-in safe containing a Shakespeare First Folio and a first edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost’. Just think of those spooks whispering about pinkos over their cups of tea an arm’s length from an expensive old book about Satan.Matthiessen’s father was an architect and a naval ...”

“... blood clots were Christopher Marlowe, violent, restless, brilliant, while the cancer would be Shakespeare, coming in many guises, dependable, sly, fully memorable. In painting, the blood clots would be Jackson Pollock, the cancer Barnett Newman. In Tory politics, Boris Johnson would be a blood clot; William Whitelaw, if ...”

“... indiscipline of democracy, admired the harmony of hierarchy; one of his favourite passages from Shakespeare was Troilus’ ‘speech on degree’: ‘Take but degree away, untune that string, and hark! What discord follows!’ He hated mass culture and often ranted about American moral decadence. The only place he felt at home in the United States was on ...”

“... not her real forename; ‘Crafts’ may be a tribute to Ellen Crafts, who with her husband, William, made a daring escape from slavery in 1848 disguised as a white male. Whoever ‘Hannah’ was, she lives now in the pages of her book, and we need to look within the text to find out who and what she was: and since it has many autobiographical ...”

“... James was eleven, Stirling Castle was raided by Catholic rebels. At sixteen, he was kidnapped by William Ruthven, earl of Gowrie, and imprisoned for ten months. This plot, known as the Ruthven Raid, sought to remove James from the influence of his first favourite, his French and Catholic cousin, Esmé Stuart. After the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, James addressed ...”

“... reassuring than not being bothered. We should not be ‘scamping our work’, as Housman accused Shakespeare of doing too often. Short-cuts are no good in the long run if one cares about ‘the truth of things’.Housman’s poetry, by the same token, is always more impressed by what actually happened than by what might have been (‘An excellent topic for a ...”

“... and visual concretion but an almost abstract delight in language. This last combination is rare: Shakespeare and Keats have it. Take, for example, a phrase from his celebrated story, ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’ (1911): a miner lies dead in a living-room, stretched out in ‘the naive dignity of death’. Or a moment in Lawrence’s travel book about ...”

“... take note: tough-guy-hipster-fedora-favourers – Al Capone, Humphrey Bogart, J. Edgar Hoover, William S. Burroughs, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Depp – might all be considered unwitting imitators of Sarah Bernhardt.) 5. The Rampant (er … ) Erotomania. (One moment, Herr Doktor – cough cough – my throat is tickling me.) World famous by her late ...”