“... New Orleans, played a count and a duke in a box at the Paris Opera during a performance of The Barber of Seville, and chose to throw away his major pieces one by one, finishing with the most elegant mate imaginable. In 1918, Capablanca, the famously instinctive Cuban prodigy, played the Ruy Lopez opening against Frank Marshall and was presented with a ...”

“... with a publisher with authors like James, Strindberg, Ford and Belloc historically on its list. As Michael Barber, an earlier biographer of Powell, without access to his archives, remarked, it was a period where a little privilege went a long way. There is no reason to doubt that at least in his first year in the capital, Powell felt at sea in London, of ...”

“... brother, Fredo, who is weak and indecisive, and is eventually murdered by his younger brother, Michael, after he assumes control of the family business. Donald was most like the hot-headed Santino ‘Sonny’ Corleone, whose impulsiveness results in his assassination by rival gang members at a tollbooth. Donald has raced through many tollbooths, but has ...”

“... some of the medical history that was being published in the Eighties, particularly by Roy Porter. Michael Neve and Jonathan Miller separately suggested that the madness of George III would make a play, and Neve lent me The Royal Malady by Charles Chenevix Trench, which is still the best account of the King’s illness and the so-called Regency Crisis. I also ...”

“... notes) Vol. – Volunteer – Thomas Ashe, who died in Mountjoy Prison 25 September 1917, to Vol. Michael Devine, INLA, who died in the Maze 20 August 1981. Above is a dove of peace caged in barbed wire; below the quote: ‘I’ll wear no convict’s uniform, nor meekly serve my time.’ Less ringing, and not attributed to the IRA, is the nearby Bloody Sunday ...”

“... of the farm at East Stour’. The father counter-attacked. His witness, the nursery maid Frances Barber, declared that the children were being influenced against him by Mrs Cottington, that they were brought up ‘very much indulged and... unruly’, that Henry spat at servants, that he committed ‘some indecent actions with his sister Beatrice’, that he ...”

“... hair, centre-parted in a distinctly outmoded do that was a credit to the artistry of the jailhouse barber. But he too maintained a demeanour of close-buttoned gentility throughout his trial, looking more like a poker-faced juror than a man accused of double murder. The American press found the entire family spooky and ‘psychotic’ in their apparent absence ...”