“... the BBC broadcast dance music on Sunday. That, of course, would not have been possible under John Reith, who had retired in 1938. November 1941 brought the first transmission of Sincerely Yours – Vera Lynn, billed as a ‘sentimental presentation by Howard Thomas’. These dates represent significant stages in the defeat of the old BBC. Vera Lynn, the ...”

“... that the wonderful vision contained in the Book of Revelation was not written by a man named John (even if he was a different John from the Gospel-writer or the author of three Epistles). The book known as Acts of the Apostles claims to be by the same author as Luke’s Gospel, but this is a vexed issue Ehrman chooses ...”

“... bright feathers in broad-brimmed hats as well as highly wrought cuirasses and greaves (Campion Hall in Oxford has a splendid set of these paintings, rare in Europe). Jehovah’s Witnesses, we are told, believe that Michael is the ‘non-incarnate’ Jesus before and after his spell on Earth. There are oddments of information like this throughout ...”

“... intellectuals included some famous names: Bryce, Courtney, Freeman, Lecky, Lowe, J.S. Mill, John Morley. A nervous concern about the consequences of mass franchise, worries about the concessionary mood of the Liberal leaders – especially in the face of violence in Ireland – led many Late Victorian Liberal intellectuals to drift rightwards toward ...”

“... have kept all right so far this winter, but won’t brag.’ Three days later, in a note thanking John Middleton Murry for a presentation copy of one of his books, comes a sudden flash of intimacy almost painful in its nakedness: ‘I feel a sad sense of shortcoming at your good opinion of my writings & myself. I fear you do not know what a feeble person I ...”

“... The title of Frances FitzGerald’s new book comes from the sermon John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, delivered on board the Arabella shortly before landing in the New World in 1630. Fully conscious of the exemplary character of their enterprise, he urged his companions to walk humbly in the ways of God by remaining true to the Puritan tenets of a faith they could no longer practise in England ...”

“... P.143. First three lines. P.183. Third, fourth and fifth lines.’ Break off to hum a few music-hall hits: ‘Par’ ought to know’; ‘When there isn’t a girl about, you do feel lonely.’ Scramble your commentary with polyglot puns and in clashing literary registers: ‘Successful shade, accept my hand in fraternal contrition! We are druv’ to ...”

“... teens, C.R.W. Nevinson fancied the life of a bohemian and attention-grabber. His idol was Augustus John, king of the Café Royal, and, in 1908, he decided to go to the Slade, as John had done. There he knocked around with Stanley Spencer, Mark Gertler and Edward Wadsworth in the Slade Coster Gang. They went to music ...”

“... adorned the dining-room of Hamilton Palace, the nude Venus was in the Moritt collection at Rokeby Hall, the portrait of Camillo Massimi was at Kingston Lacy and the portrait of Juan de Pareja was at Longford Castle, to name only the outstanding examples. Just how little general awareness there was of this development is clear from the fascinating pamphlets ...”

“... and institutions, all run by and serving African Americans. To be sure, as the Black historian John Hope Franklin, who spent his early years in Tulsa, pointed out in his memoirs, the label ‘Black Wall Street’ was a bit of a misnomer. Most of the residents worked as cooks and maids in the homes of white Tulsans and many lived in rented rooms or shacks ...”

“... Farrant, and later by Oxford’s Boys, an amalgam of children’s companies put together by John Lyly, who was then secretary to the Earl of Oxford. Two elegant Lyly comedies, Campaspe and Sappho and Phao, were premiered there in 1584, but in that same year legal wrangles over the lease led to the closure of the theatre. If Shakespeare and his company ...”

“... England a little nicer and lovelier by helping to found the community and school at Dartington Hall, in Devon. He was a withdrawn, shy boy, on whom the impact of friendship and common intellectual excitement at Cambridge was enormous. When James Klugman and John Cornford, the Panza and Quixote of Cambridge student ...”

“... embroidered creations are silk panels in the Cavendish Hanging – now displayed at Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk – featuring sewn images of a South American armadillo, known as a tatou, as well as a toucan sitting on a branch and another ‘byrde of America’, possibly a blond-crested woodpecker from Amazonia. In 1569, Henry VIII’s former ...”

“... people for more than a century.To later chroniclers, in particular the Elizabethan martyrologist John Foxe, the Lollards were heroic proto-Protestants who had advocated for an English Bible long before the arrival of the first printed versions in the 1520s and 1530s. Lollards deplored the wealth of the Church, its love of opulent decorations and neglect of ...”

“... 1993, accompanied by his friend Duwayne Brooks. They were waiting to catch a bus near the Well Hall Roundabout in Eltham, South London. A group of white youths ran across the road without warning. Stephen Lawrence was stabbed twice. Duwayne Brooks heard the remark ‘What? What? Nigger!’ as the youths approached. From here on, there is no ...”