“... of Derry, whose mistresses and profane talk made the English colony shun him; Henry Cardinal, Duke of York, brother to Charles Edward, at 78 ‘still uncommonly handsome, with the freshness of youth in his cheeks’; and finally the Pope, whose toe Margaret and Katherine were all agog to kiss, when he ‘by a motion of ...”

“... roadshow organised by Shaftesbury and Buckingham around the King’s bastard son, James, Duke of Monmouth, was playing to rapturous crowds. Activists among the country gentry, incensed by the long prorogation of Parliament in 1675, and by then convinced that Charles II would never accept Parliament as a partner in government, had for some years ...”

“... head of suffrage marches, and carried himself with such distinction that he was called the Grand Duke. To top it all, when I read his diary I discovered he was passionately and very problematically in love with his best friend’s wife. I knew little about his artist son, Richard – C.R.W. Nevinson – apart from his First World War paintings and ...”

“... previous months thanks to the death of his eldest son, Arthur, and his beloved wife, Elizabeth of York. It was imperative that he establish his family properly among the club of European royalty. Arthur’s death had disrupted Henry’s coup in acquiring a daughter-in-law from the Trastámara dynasty of Aragon-Catalonia-Castile: Princess Margaret’s ...”

“... Crisis of 1679, the attempt to exclude Charles II’s Roman Catholic heir presumptive, James, Duke of York, from the throne. In the political dramas of the 1680s the Russell dynasty produced two of the iconic figures of English Whig mythology: the Whig martyr William, Lord Russell, and one of the Immortal Seven who in ...”

“... context and to providing brief sketches of its members. Prominent inhabitants of a central New York town called Eastridge, the Talberts live in a big house with a mansard roof in the outdated ‘taste of 1875’ and derive their income from the Plated-Ware Works, where Mr Talbert – ‘materially the first man of the place’ – has worked his way up ...”

“... to know any No voters, but I keep asking people what they think the final outcome will be. In the Duke of York, where there used to be a portrait of my early hero Ralph Bossence, an old schoolfriend, Maxy, whom I remember playing in a pipe-band as part of Paisley’s first election campaign for Belfast City Council, says he ...”

“... service to the Russians, he apparently possessed knowledge, documented by Costello, of how the Duke of Windsor had compromised himself with the Nazis. It was his insurance that he would never have had to flee to Moscow, under whose crude rigours the fastidious Blunt would surely have quickly buckled. The traffic was not all one way, however. Read The Storm ...”

“... provided the bulk of the clients, seeking the glamour given to safari by such celebrities as the Duke and Duchess of York (1925), the Prince of Wales (1928 and 1930) and Hemingway (1934). Porters were made redundant by the motor-car, so that even the pseudo-feudal contact with Africans sustained in the old days was ...”

“... the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco, the phonejack-in-the-sky of the AT–T Building in New York) gave plausibility to the promotional prose. AT–T was the work of Philip Johnson, the friend of Andy Warhol, and so the publicity came with a background story ready to hand. The Post-Modern would be the art-historical movement that went beyond art by ...”

“... agent Rosalind Chatto to tell her that when in last year’s LRB diary I quote an old lady in New York as saying ‘I zigged when I should have zagged’ the original remark came from the American sports reporter Red Butler, who reported it as having been said by Randolph Turpin after his defeat by Sugar Ray Robinson. How my old lady came to know this is a ...”

“... book, Darcy could raise only 260 fighting men to confront the many thousand Pilgrims now occupying York. Without help from further afield Darcy had little choice but to surrender Pontefract, and thereafter, from perhaps a mixture of motives, to work with rather than against the Pilgrims. This, at least, is Hoyle’s opinion, which is not universally ...”

“... that could only happen in England. I have always thought that if the Prince of Wales or the Duke of Edinburgh meant what they say about the environment they’d long ago have put their weight behind a cycle track through the Park. Now it’s out of their hands as the Park is run by some private concern which would, I’m sure, be only too happy to put a ...”

“... of Love Story, at the Royal Command Performance of the film: ‘Tony saw Love Story in New York. Hated it.’ When Dennis Main Wilson says, ‘Ma’am, I have the honour to produce a little show called Till Death Us Do Part,’ she cuts down his faux modesty with: ‘Isn’t that that frightfully dreary thing in the East End?’ At the end of Carousel ...”

“... Her fictional heroine was Becky Sharp. Spurning overtures from a sputtering peer, a decrepit Duke of Newcastle and an unappealing millionaire, she settled for a stolid, seemingly solid, squire called Clayton Glyn, who unknown to her had begun living on capital. On their honeymoon Clayton is reputed to have hired a swimming pool at Brighton for two days ...”