“... to defend the record of the Schools Council. It was set up in 1964, a gentler time, by Sir Edward Boyle, and its brief was then, and has, in a variety of manifestations, remained, the combining of examination reform with curriculum development. These were areas traditionally kept apart, for the soundest political reasons and with dire consequences for ...”

“... reminding us that the interest of a history lies not only in what it says but in when it was said. 1968 was the year in which it seemed necessary to warn Edward Heath against wandering too eagerly in the direction of Selsdon Park. Here is Blake on tariff reform: It has seldom paid for the Conservative Party to come ...”

“... fought in major actions in 1759, Britain’s ‘year of victories’: Equiano as a powder-boy on Edward Boscawen’s flagship the Namur at the Battle of Lagos, and Spavens as a topman on the frigate Vengeance at Quiberon Bay. Equiano later sailed to the Arctic with the young Nelson as part of the 1773 Phipps expedition, though they were in different ...”

“... ignoring the Queen.’ Now the process of reappraisal has been taken a good deal further by Edward Gregg, a graduate originally of the University of Lawrence, Kansas, to whose scholars, and scholarly resources in the shape of the Spencer Research Library, students of English history in the 18th century are already greatly indebted. Dr Gregg sees the ...”

“... it did not get her into the usual reference books. She was the subject of a biography, in 1959, by Edward Grierson, Storm Bird: The Strange Life of Georgina Weldon, which Brian Thompson commends in his bibliography as ‘genial and entertaining’. His own book is as genial as the subject will allow, often extravagantly entertaining, and as shrewd as it is ...”

“... turrets and a long porch where elderly people sat and warmed themselves in the sun. My brother said, ‘This is the bastion of Yiddishism. Here, it’s decided who is mortal or immortal, who is progressive or reactionary.’ I heard someone ask: ‘So you’ve brought your brother?’ ‘Yes, here he is.’ ‘Greetings!’ I got out of the car and a soft ...”

“... enough to move up the service hierarchy. Landemare managed this in 1901, when she went to work for Edward Dunbar Kilburn, who had made a fortune in the import/export business and lived in Gloucester Square, a ‘good part of London’. As this was ‘new money’, dinner was served à la Russe, in sequential courses, of which there were at least seven. The ...”

“... of these images is that of Yeats, both worldly and spiritualist, silly like us, as Auden said (sillier, some would say), and yet wonderfully hard-headed. But there can’t be a weirder or more unmanageable image than that of Rilke, the social and emotional butterfly, dreamy, hysterical, devoted to angels and children and the lure of ...”

“... bye-wayes, and many secret vaults and corners’. It had once housed fugitive Catholics and was said to have ‘secret passages towards the water’. Shakespeare bought it for £140 from Henry Walker, ‘citizen and minstrel of London’. The deed of sale is dated 10 March 1613: he put down £80 and the following day signed a mortgage agreement with Walker ...”

“... afternoon to spend the evening of Saturday and the following Sunday with friends … he is said to be spending his week-end at So-and-so. I am informed that this name for Saturday and the day which comes between a Saturday and Monday is confined to this district.’ By 1929 the weekend was an established national fact, but still decidedly modern, often ...”

“... of direct relevance – for instance, Michael Bush’s analysis of the dispute between Lisle and Edward Seymour (1966) – are overlooked. In fact, to judge from the bibliography, the editor closed her reading list well over a decade ago, a decade full of very important contributions. This has led to error. Miss Byrne’s description of early-Tudor society ...”

“... keen sense of what her characters did next was revealed by her nephew and early biographer, James Edward Austen-Leigh. He reported that Austen told her family: ‘Mr Woodhouse survived his daughter’s marriage and kept her and Mr Knightley from settling at Donwell about two years.’Most readers of Austen’s fiction feel instinctively that her heroines ...”

“... Anglia and fell on Wessex over Twelfth Night 878, King Alfred ‘rallied his subjects’ (writes Edward James). ‘Rallied his subjects’ sounds more grown-up, more professional and political, than ‘burnt the cakes’ – though this is exactly the moment when King Alfred is supposed to have burnt the cakes – but on reflection one wonders whether it ...”

“... they supposed we imagined the Sun revolved round the Earth. Because it looks as if it does, they said. And how, Wittgenstein wondered, would it look if it didn’t? The logic of this situation suggests that we need more proof and more argument, and more experience of living with doubt, but the over-whelming mass of the interest in the Kennedy assassination ...”

“... and third volumes. For one thing, only such a person will be able to make sense of much that is said. For another, only such a person will be able to sift fact from error. Much of what is said is quite bizarre, whether in the context of Japanese scholarship or as anything that might be told a foreign reader. I do not feel ...”