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“... telecommunications caught up, they also enjoyed a delicious freedom from further instructions from home base.The year after Trafalgar, Sir Home Riggs Popham insouciantly scooped up the Cape of Good Hope, before convincing himself that Pitt (who had in fact just died) would be delighted if he sailed up the River Plate and ...”

“... failed. One of the questions was ‘Who was Job?’ This mystified me. ‘Who was Job?’ I came home and asked, not even knowing it was a name and pronouncing it the same as in a job of work. ‘I’ve never heard of Job.’ And a good job I hadn’t. 25 April. Graffiti in the lift at the Middlesex Hospital: Love. Sex. Salt. An Arab, presumably, pining for ...”

“... works of art through the roof. Those lucky few whose ancestors went on the Grand Tour and shipped home huge quantities of European art at knock-down prices in the 18th century now find themselves sitting on a goldmine. Selling off a Titian or a Rubens once a generation will keep the wolves of the Treasury at bay almost indefinitely, at any rate under existing ...”

“... story of the soul wandering away from God and then in torment and tears finding its way home through conversion is also the story of the entire created order.’ I would like to suggest that the Confessions is also a book about reading and the relation between text and truth. Indeed, it proved to be crucial, for better or for worse, in determining ...”

“... the way in which he strings an exotic sketch of a minor character along a rope of exile. Stein in Lord Jim, for instance, with his collections of butterflies and ‘catacombs of beetles’, is said to have taken part in the revolutions of 1848, then fled to Trieste, and then to Tripoli, ‘with a stock of cheap watches to hawk about’. Bezmozgis is similarly ...”

“... Robert Ford, and stabbed him to death. Ford was 15 years old and had just taken his girl-friend home after spending an evening at a local Citizens’ Band radio club. McCluskie, also 15, and Reynolds, 14, had spent the evening drinking and were on their way to a chip shop when they ran into their victim. It is barely worth speaking of anything as tangible ...”

“... abroad in this period were often put down to the fact that it was also exceptionally fortunate at home. Fortunate, it was believed, because – in the midst of European absolutism – the Glorious Revolution had bestowed upon it, and it alone, sound parliamentary government, religious toleration, and an end to dynastic conflict. Fortunate, too, in that its ...”

“... cent holding in these Beaverbrook papers, he owns more than the present wielder of power there, Lord Matthews – the tycoon admirer of Mrs Thatcher – from Trafalgar Holdings. In yet another sortie into the Fleet Holdings battle Swiss bankers are believed to be buying shares eagerly – and again, they are buying them for unknown clients. Another salient ...”

“... Bradbury and Ruland seem to expect a woman who has just witnessed the destruction of her home, the murder of friends and relatives, the death of one child and abduction of another, to behave like a cross between Margaret Mead and David Attenborough. It is quite untrue to suggest that she averted her eyes from the realities of the ...”

“... Dominic​ Raab is the eighth lord chancellor and secretary of state for justice since the Conservative Party entered government in 2010. The average tenure has been nineteen months, with a corresponding churn of junior ministers and special advisers. Kenneth Clarke, the first in the post, lasted 28 months, just pipped by Chris Grayling, whose disastrous term was the longest at 32 months ...”

“... health but it isn’t certain whether Split was always intended to be a spectacular retirement home or conceived as an imperial palace, its ritual spaces there to serve the cult of the emperor as god. It was these spaces and their potential which Adam took back to Britain along with his notes and drawings. He coined the Spalatro Order, an adaptation of an ...”

“... Bevan, who was to become his friend and mentor for the next 20 years. Bevan introduced him to Lord Beaverbrook, thereby cementing one of several unlikely alliances that characterised Foot’s long life. He later said of Beaverbrook: ‘I loved him, not merely as a friend, but as a second father.’ Beaverbrook, though in most respects a reactionary ...”

“... of Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris outside St Clement Danes. The interesting peer of the realm Lord Ashcroft KCMG wrote about the unveiling on his website conservativehome: ‘I was privileged enough to share that special moment … as a guest of the Bomber Command Association. As one of the principal donors of the appeal for the new memorial – I gave ...”

“... lecture that evening: not the lecture he was due to give to an audience of fifty at the Kensington home of Lord and Lady Glenconner on the poetry of Arnaut Daniel, but the one Marinetti was due to give to an audience of five hundred at the Bechstein Hall on Futurism. ‘“Futurist” Leader in London,’ reported the Daily ...”

“... Mayfair was developed from the 1720s, and by the end of the 18th century was established as the home of the beau monde, a position which it retained as long as the beau monde lasted. It was the ground rents thus created, subsequently augmented by revenue from Belgravia and Pimlico, which transmogrified the Grosvenors from insignificant Cheshire squires into ...”