“... in 1910, ‘if ONE COULD TELL EVERYONE THE TRUTH, one’s father, teacher, neighbour, and even the king. All fabricated, imposed authority would go to the devil – what is rightful would remain natural.’ Ferenczi understood like nobody else, even Freud perhaps, the revolutionary potential of psychoanalysis. He knew that people speaking differently to each ...”

“... way, the mathematical sublime has cast its spell. At the end of the fourth act of Henry V, the King asks his herald for details of the English dead at Agincourt. The herald hands over a paper, and the King reads: Edward, the Duke of York, the Earl of Suffolk, Sir Richard Ketly, Davy Gam, esquire; None else of name; and ...”

“... avant-garde art world Fraser was one of the more worthwhile dealers of his time. According to that king of the métier Leo Castelli, he was ‘a superb dealer’; among leading artists, Richard Hamilton says that ‘Robert’s was the best gallery I knew in London,’ Ellsworth Kelly that ‘he was a very courageous and flamboyant dealer,’ Claes Oldenburg ...”

“... the composer Richard Rodgers (Rodgers and Hammerstein) in New York, she was invited to star in The King and I and did so at Drury Lane. Profumo did not immediately gain office when Churchill won the 1951 election, but a year later he became parliamentary undersecretary at the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation. While he was still at that ministry and ...”

“... nominal Christians who made a great show of piety in their writing.‘Solomon, the Son of David, King of Israel, hath said that the beginning of our Key is to fear God, to adore Him, to honour Him with contrition of heart, to invoke Him in all matters which we wish to undertake, and to operate with very great devotion, for thus God will lead us in the right ...”

“... gift. He was given a minor position in the elaborate hierarchy of servants who supplied the king with his every need. Later on he married a woman who was reputed to be a soft-skinned beauty, and the couple had a number of children, most of them hairy like their father. Among the hirsute offspring were three girls: Maddalena, Francesca and Antonietta. As ...”

“... sense, a mark impressed, engraved or otherwise made on a surface: a brand or stamp or cut. Peter Simon’s engraving of Fuseli’s ‘The Enchanted Island Before the Cell of Prospero’ for Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery (1797). The Compleat Drawing-Book is an example of the kind of educational artistic guide that flourished in the 18th century. The ...”

“... also included the artists Nigel Henderson, William Turnbull and Magda Cordell, the architects Peter and Alison Smithson, and the critic Reyner Banham. In the late 1980s the Smithsons looked back on the ‘as found’ aesthetic of New Brutalism as ‘a confronting recognition of what the postwar world actually was like’: ‘In a society that had nothing ...”

“... Salieri had to turn down the commission for the new opera to mark the coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia, on 6 September. Thus it was that Mozart found himself having to write a large-scale opera within the space of less than three weeks. He returned from Prague to Vienna barely a fortnight before the premiere of The Magic Flute (for which the ...”

“... his appetite for power and influence. Though he returned to Cambridge to resume his fellowship at King’s, he was often to be seen, with his bowler-hat and brief-case, hurrying off to London for a board meeting or an appointment with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The passionate, and of necessity highly secret, homosexuality of the pre-war days was ...”

“... the killing of a white stallion, existed throughout the Indo-European world. In some, a queen or king pantomimes copulation with a stallion (or, as the case may be, a mare). The worship of a white horse in pre-Roman England is dramatically attested by the colossal outlines carved into the chalk hills. I vividly recall riding, again with Penelope Betjeman, up ...”

“... dimple-cheeked deus ex machina Lodge pulls out, with the implacable defiance of a Blue Peter presenter exclaiming, ‘Here’s one I prepared earlier,’ as Ursula is conveniently rewarded with the discovery of a cache of immensely valuable IBM share certificates that pay for her new, improved nursing-home care (and a cool $100,000 left over to ...”

“... of 15 January for the deadline, because it is the officially celebrated birthday of Martin Luther King and many felt that Bush either knew this and did not care or, worse still, had not noticed. But, except for a fistful of Trotskyists, all those attending the rally in Lafayette Park last weekend were complaining of the financial cost of the war and implying ...”

“... for the contemporary biographer. There can be no doubt that Mr Macmillan, on his sick bed at King Edward’s Hospital for Officers and despite the aftermath of a major operation, was determined at almost all costs to prevent Mr R.A. Butler succeeding him. His illness would have given him every excuse to resign at once and proffer no advice to the Queen ...”

“... Haskell was obviously suspect, since he had a Russian mother and a Russian wife and had been to King’s College, Cambridge, so the press surrounded his house, making it impossible for him to go out. I was staying there at the time and had to push my way past them to obtain basic provisions. They also repeatedly telephoned in the early hours of the ...”