“... even of spreading leprosy (baldness was thought to be an indicator of the disease). The early Christian Fathers who interpreted the tale were more concerned with establishing that even the holiest of men could be tempted by Satan. Both sets of commentators claimed that the she-bears responded to Elisha personally, not to any divine command. Neither ...”

“... long before he died, when he was visiting Washington as a guest of the then director of the FBI, William Sessions. Over dinner, we asked him about his personal security procedures. But Falcone turned aside the implied offer of a professional audit, declaring that the security arrangements provided for him were excellent. Actually they were comfortable, even ...”

“... Melmotte. Even Disraeli reckoned that capitalism of the sort that came to Britain with William of Orange (‘Dutch finance’) was detestable: it had resulted in ‘the degradation of a fettered and burthened multitude … made debt a national habit … credit the ruling power … introduced a loose, inexact, haphazard and dishonest spirit in the ...”

“... the help of his family and won full custody of their daughter. Mahmoody’s memoir, written with William Hoffer (who also co-wrote the movie Midnight Express), is full of stereotypes and prejudices about Iranians. It became a runaway bestseller, a Hollywood blockbuster and the book one had to read to ‘learn about Iran’. But I didn’t recognise the Iran ...”

“... interpretation of the ideas they contain. One early achievement, due to Benson Mates (1953) and William and Martha Kneale (1962), was the recovery of Stoic propositional logic and its recognition as a system more general and powerful – and more like the logic of Frege and Russell – than Aristotle’s. The Stoic physics of the continuum was championed in ...”

“... for 30,000 florins. It was an extraordinarily spectacular coup, news of which resounded through Christian Europe. A key element of the agreement between the pope and the Great Company’s leaders was that after leaving the Avignon region they would take service (at papal expense) under the Marquis of Montferrat in his and the pope’s war against the ...”

“... named Hyglac. When Harold was killed at Hastings, the canon who went to beg the body from William was Ailric the ‘Childemaister’ of Waltham. And among the many works of Aelfric of Cerne, and later of Eynsham, were the first Latin grammar written in Old English, and a Latin Colloquy that was designed as a simple text for use in school; it was later ...”

“... Party’s campaign to smear one of its most effective and consistent opponents’, namely William Randolph Hearst, had long been interested in Welles. He was regarded as a threat, and placed on the FBI Security Index largely because of his political activities on behalf of the committee organised to defend the beleaguered Communist labour leader Harry ...”

“... day: Palmerston, Macaulay, Charles Darwin and Annabella Milbanke. In her twenties she came to know Christian von Bunsen, the Prussian ambassador in London, founder of a Protestant hospital in Rome and a German one in London, staffed by deaconesses from a Lutheran establishment at Kaiserswerth, near Düsseldorf. Although Nightingale’s chosen vocation was ...”

“... events in Dylan Thomas’s body are related pantheistically to more massive ones outside’, as William Empson decided in 1947. The poet’s body is the land in Chronic too. The ailing body, dying, as we are all dying; the body no longer young; the infected body, living with (for example) HIV, pervade Powell’s books. But new here is the omnipresent and ...”

“... this period there are written chronicles to supplement the archaeology; the Benedictine historian William of Malmesbury tells us that in this case the dangerous dead were malefactors, some excommunicated and others corrupt priests, who had risen from their graves and were seen walking by night, groaning and spreading disease. These two vampire epidemics, as ...”

“... feeling that he is better off without opportunities. The sexual suggestion of blush brings in the Christian idea that virginity is good in itself, so that any renunciation is good ... And so it goes on, one of the texts that taught a generation to read well and feel good about it. Here we feel we are really seeing through Gray; his poem has a ‘massive ...”

“... seruants place and dutie’ was acknowledged to be ‘of more abiect and inferiour kinde’, as William Gouge put it in Of Domesticall Duties (1622). By the mid-20th century, the material conditions of service had changed beyond recognition, yet the ideological assumptions that had governed the early modern household continued to colour the language and ...”

“... future citizen of Soviet America’.After twelve issues, two of the young editors, Philip Rahv and William Phillips, appalled by the Moscow show trials of 1936 and 1937, wrested the magazine from party control. The new PR emerged in December 1937. F.W. Dupee, Dwight Macdonald and Mary McCarthy were also on the masthead, as was George L.K. Morris, artist, art ...”

“... not listen. It would have been natural to turn instead to the director of the CIA, but this was William Casey, a former businessman and Nixon aide who had been controversially appointed by Reagan as the reward for managing his 1980 election campaign. As the intelligence professionals working with the executive saw it, Casey was reckless, uninformed, and ...”