“... a draft deferment every bit as opportunist as Clinton’s. He also supported the Martin Luther King movement, and paid generous tribute to it (criticising his own party for its abstention and opposition) in his inaugural address as Speaker. Furthermore, he has admitted to smoking dope, to divorcing his first wife while she was in the recovery room after a ...”

“... there in 1878. She went to seek respite from her passionate but unconsummated love affair with Richard Doughty-Wylie (nephew of the great explorer Charles Doughty), whom she had met when he was British Consul in Konya. Doughty-Wylie was married, and was not prepared to risk his career by leaving his wife. A man with physical courage to match ...”

“... features. In Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, recalled for him by the prophet Daniel, the Babylonian King sees a giant image with a head made of gold, breast and arms of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of iron and clay. Here is not only the same sequence of metals as in Hesiod and Plato, but, with the localisation of the metals to ...”

“... to explain the footnote he appended, in his 1765 edition of Shakespeare’s plays, to a passage in King John about shoes: – – – slippers, (which his nimble hasteHad falsely thrust upon contrary feet,) I know not how the commentators understand this important passage, which in Dr Warburton’s edition is marked as eminently beautiful, and, on the ...”

“... long ago pointed out, decide that this was the perfect time for him to sell his share in the King’s Men, simultaneously funding a comfortable retirement and avoiding paying a portion of the bill for rebuilding the playhouse. Instead of getting involved in the fuss and cost of reconstruction, according to this narrative, Shakespeare contributed just the ...”

“... for granted by millions, including possibly the same 86 per cent of Americans who told the Larry King Show that they believed in aliens and almost certainly the proportion of that number who say that those aliens have the same supernatural abilities as Lucifer and the fallen angels. Today’s testimony doesn’t stretch that far. In fact, it’s fairly ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... of Hermes, Zoroaster and Pythagoras or relations between the later Roman Empire and the Persian king Shapur II, which Angelo Poliziano, Pico della Mirandola and others debated in the new Florentine library of San Marco. Yet they were also – or were supposed to be – places of quiet, intensive study. When the French jurist and antiquarian Claude ...”

“... aunt, he Lady Diana’s publisher. On the maternal side, Sybil Cooper was descended directly from King William IV through his mistress Mrs Jordan, in her day a celebrated actress. It is not, I think, altogether illusory to see, in this infusion of blood, cause for Hart-Davis’s own inclination towards the stage and traces of the Sailor ...”

“... identity he used to wear a white rose on the anniversary of the Battle of Bosworth, in memory of Richard III, whom he regarded as the last English – because Plantagenet – king. Coincidentally, Shapiro quotes from a popular postwar textbook, The Plantagenets, in which John Hooper Harvey states that the Jews engaged in a ...”

“... that these ‘docu-dramas’ are a new phenomenon, a modern hybrid. Those with long memories cite Richard Brooks’s 1967 film In Cold Blood as a prototype. Based on Truman Capote’s account of a quadruple murder in rural Kansas, the film was shot in vérité black and white and used the actual locations where the killings took place. But the true crime ...”

“... questions that they askd was, when it would thunder. Joseph Banks, The ‘Endeavour’ Journal Richard Holmes describes The Age of Wonder as a ‘relay race of scientific stories’ about the explosion of exploration and scientific achievement in England between two celebrated voyages, Captain James Cook’s first circumnavigation of the world in the ...”

“... be manipulated ‘as a convenience for the rich and powerful to save themselves from criticism’. Richard Ingrams, then editor of Private Eye, suggested that, since he felt so strongly, Waugh might stand for Parliament himself. It’s possible Ingrams was joking, but Waugh took up the suggestion and ran in Thorpe’s North Devon constituency for the Dog ...”

“... having examined the child, claimed to have detected promise of mathematical genius. Moving on to King Edward VI Grammar School in Aston, Reed specialised in Classics. Since Greek was not taught, he taught himself, and went on to win the Temperley Latin prize and a scholarship to Birmingham University. There he was taught and befriended – as were his ...”

“... local dominance by various ruses, some of them old-fashioned daredevil exploits devised by Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen. ‘When full deduction is made of the advantageous conditions’ of Allenby’s victory at Megiddo, Liddell Hart concluded, ‘the operations deserve to rank among history’s masterpieces for their breadth of vision and ...”