“... Saud (generally known as Ibn Saud), succession has passed down the line of his sons. The present king, Salman, reportedly Ibn Saud’s 25th son, inherited the throne in 2015 on the death of his half-brother Abdullah and is close to being the last of his generation. At 81 Salman is in fragile health: he has had two strokes and suffers from Alzheimer’s. On ...”

“... of Blériot the Count de Lambert flew over Paris and circled the Eiffel Tower at 300 metres. If King Kong had climbed the Tower Parisians could not have been more excited. It is true that Santos-Dumont had done the same thing in a dirigible in 1901, but the Count’s feat was the equivalent of a man performing bicycle stunts in the air. That year an air ...”

“... from Paris, rumoured to be ‘a druggie’; and Conchita Maxwell, daughter of Ernie ‘the Oil King’ Maxwell and his much younger Mexican cleaning lady. Finally, there are Lee’s roommates: Dede, ‘literally, a follower’, whose obvious Jewishness disqualifies her from consideration as a Serious Babe, and Sin-Jun, a deceptively mild Korean who hides a ...”

“... the wider political audience which the newsbooks were reaching – a point also explored by Sara Pearl in one of the many excellent essays brought together by David Lindley as The Court Masque. Of course, while particular issues or episodes might split politicians down the middle, there was no two-party system in Early Modern England. The friendship between ...”

“... as three stories written in different periods of his life’. The second of these stories, ‘A King Listens’, describes a monarch sitting motionless on his throne, tormented by the noises which interrupt the sepulchral silence of his palace. In the third, ‘The Name, the Nose’, the story of a Parisian rake in pursuit of an elusive scent (a vein mined ...”

“... 1941 that the Japanese naval air force had attacked the US Pacific Fleet at a location called ‘Pearl Harbor’, no one on Hitler’s staff could find it on the map.The​ decision-makers of the 1940s have many active friends among the historians and writers of our time: defenders and descendants still wedded to ‘their’ service and its traditions, to ...”

“... on morale: it persuaded the majority that everyone was in this together when they read of the king being served spam. Of course, there were some inequalities, and an enterprising black market (Private Walker in Dad’s Army); and I still remember (or think I do) the farmers in Staffordshire who grudgingly took me and my mother in as evacuees towards the ...”

“... of its sort in English – means we know the 15th-century Pastons better than we know any medieval king or queen. The letters, first published in 1787, revealed a family on the make. Clement Paston, a yeoman farmer born at the end of the 14th century, set his son up as a lawyer. The lawyer bought land, and his son John inherited more, including Caister ...”

“... was part of a campaign by the self-styled Patriots to whip up support for the war against Spain. King Alfred was chosen as the subject as the purported founder of the British Navy, though there are other contenders for the title, including Henry VIII, Good Queen Bess (the pirates’ patron), Charles I and, not least, Oliver Cromwell. The war in question is ...”

“... and even transvests Charles I into a baroque Margaret Thatcher, closing seven hundred pages on the King with the words: ‘He believed some principles worth adhering to whatever the repercussions – and well, he may even have been right.’ Russell will compare Ship Money to the Poll Tax, and describe the arrival of James I in London as a foretaste of the ...”

“... he may not have been for a long time.’ When Japan attacked the Philippines, four hours after Pearl Harbor, the sceptics were proved right. The handful of B17S, lined up wingtip to wingtip, were destroyed on the ground. The Japanese landed unopposed. Manila was abandoned without a fight. MacArthur, with his family and President Quezón, withdrew to the ...”

“... fluctuations in the magnetic field, the minute shifts in air pressure, the winking apertures of pearl light above the morning ocean. Now it appears we need our weather-analysts more than our shrinks. Migratory depressions, ‘lows’, like the ever-increasing columns of out-patients and inadequates wandering the streets, have their life cycles, their ...”

“... Richard Hotot gives a sense of time’s fractured geometry, dating a book to ‘the 33rd year of King Henry [III] son of King John, which is 5448 years from the beginning of the world, 1249 from the birth of Christ, 1216 from Christ’s death, 544 from the building of Peterborough, 184 from the Norman Conquest, 79 from the ...”

“... you are gentleman,’ Morgan said.   No one moved.   Morgan went over to Edward King, head of the Union Trust, and drew him to the table.   ‘There’s the place, King,’ he said, ‘and here’s the pen.’ King signed. The other presidents followed suit ... The ...”

“... the following from Reynolds’s ‘Thirteen Days in a Northern City’: Like most people, the King goes to the mountains to ski, normally driving, but when cars were banned during the Oil Crisis he took a tram for the first time. At the door, loaded with skis, he asked the conductor: ‘Do I have to pay?’ Admittedly, Reynolds avoids the worst ...”