“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... are famous) and Naples (Sir William Hamilton). There were political refugees, notably Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, and his brother, the Cardinal Duke of York (who was born in Rome and left only once to go to Paris in 1745 and prepare to go to England should the rebellion be successful). Many Jacobites had followed them and some may have ...”

“... the evidence in the Main Plot trial of 1603. This is not the first edition of Ralegh’s letters. Edward Edwards published 159 letters in his Life of Ralegh in 1868, but chiefly from the main repositories: the British Library, the Public Record Office and the Cecil Papers at Hatfield House. The present collection numbers 228. As Youings ...”

“... interested in printing the true facts about a major political event. Although Rowland subsequently said the quarrel had merely been ‘a lover’s tiff, this was far from being the case. Behind the veil of kiss-and-make-up, an unsettling struggle has been going on, with Rowland keen to get rid not only of his editor but of three or four other senior staff ...”

“... best left to newspapers: the role of the radio news bulletin was to encourage people to buy them. Edward Stourton recounts that one broadcast began: ‘Good evening, today is Good Friday. There is no news.’ By the mid-1930s, however, the BBC had set up a small news department as part of its burgeoning bureaucracy. It employed no reporters – news items ...”