“... Bolingbroke was greeted tumultuously as the prospective saviour of the realm. Richard, hurrying home, found himself deserted in mid-Wales and faced with no alternative to putting himself in his cousin’s power. With Richard his virtual prisoner, and satisfied that those who had welcomed him would go along with the next step, Henry set about preparing to ...”

“... Odysseus. How often and how easily he weeps: on the shores of Calypso’s island when he thinks of home, then when he sees his drunken shipmate Elpenor in Hades, also in Hades when his dead mother tells him that back in Ithaca Penelope’s eyes are never free from tears, there too when he meets Agamemnon and they swap unhappy memories and the tears roll down ...”

“... security services knew all about the smuggling. The six demanded government documents to prove it. Home Secretary Kenneth Baker signed a ‘public immunity certificate’ which enabled him to withhold the information on grounds of security. Eventually a back-room deal was struck whereby the Ordtec Six pleaded guilty in exchange for derisory punishment. The ...”

“... latter than the former), has weakened the impact both of ‘initiatives’ and of attempts at what Lord Salisbury called ‘resolute government’ (intended to restore law and order by demonstrating that violence would not influence political decision-making, and automatically nullified by each reversion to an initiative). If the recent appointment of a ...”

“... into the group. The second, and longest, part, and the one in which the author is most at home, deals with the aristocracy and the economy, with separate chapters on estate management, agriculture, industry, transport and towns, and with an overall assessment of the aristocratic contribution to long-term economic development. The social and political ...”

“... been taught?’ As always, the Bible was there to keep her on message (‘Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee?’), and within a few years she had learned to shuttle with ease between her two worlds, cheerfully picketing her high school graduation ceremony before heading inside to accept her diploma. But her fundamental decency obstinately persisted ...”

“... else: a pseudo-monarchy, with government shared by a ‘single person’ – Oliver Cromwell, lord protector – and Parliament. Cromwell was backed by a written constitution, the work of another soldier, John Lambert, which focused on moderate franchise reform, checks and balances, and a certain degree of religious toleration. It was inaugurated in a ...”

“... to be a use for the term ‘gentleman’ – to signify ‘a highly respectable person, not a lord’. (England here separated from France, where gentilhomme has always signified ‘nobleman’.) In its earliest years ‘gentleman’ was by no means a glamorous sobriquet. The implication tended to be that you were somebody’s ‘gentleman’, a dependant ...”

“... of power that existed in Britain, were outfaced by the orthodox military principles proclaimed by Lord George Murray and accepted by the Jacobite leaders. Dr Wormald’s attack on Mary Queen of Scots must be taken very seriously. The chapter which sets out the reality of Scottish politics and society on the eve of the Queen’s birth is a brilliant piece of ...”

“... Moustache as events of world-historical importance. The Guardian relegated the NBA story to Home News on page 3, with much explanation as to what exactly net books were. As interesting as the unwarranted prominence was the care which went into the formulation of the Times lead. The picture of Kingsley Amis seemed shrewdly chosen to forestall the ...”

“... collapses in ignominious failure, her cover completely blown, the ‘shee spy’ is able to get home only by writing an even more eloquent begging letter to a passing English aristocrat, Lord Arlington. In Todd’s reading, furthermore, Behn is no more successful as a lover than as a spy. Her liaisons are presented as ...”

“... of the British political class of the 1930s as one looks at those Eden had to serve with. Lord Reading, the first Foreign Secretary he worked for, saw the post as essentially ‘a retirement’ job and did little. Next came Sir John Simon, not only lazy – he would flee the office if work threatened – but, as Eden noted in his diary, with ‘an ...”

“... had to resign his post as Secretary to the Admiralty after the ejection of his patron (and former Lord High Admiral) James II. When Pepys died in May 1703, aged 70, the autopsy confirmed that he had lived hard: his lungs were full of black spots, his kidneys full of stones and his gut was discoloured and septic. And of course he wrote a diary, nine large ...”

“... and British Columbia. On the accession of Queen Victoria, he was nominated by the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, to a baronetcy as the representative man of letters at the same time as Herschel was nominated as the representative man of science. His attempts to attain a peerage were for many years frustrated by his wife, who behaved after their separation ...”

“... were household names in Europe and the new United States. In Italy in 1821, Lord Byron christened his newly built yacht the Bolivar, overriding his impulse to name it after his mistress Teresa Guiccioli. Byron even thought (briefly) of migrating to Venezuela, because it was ‘Bolívar’s country’. (It’s not very easy to picture him ...”