“... a posh voice’. He advises them to read the Bible. ‘Capitalist lackey!’ somebody shouts. Lord, what did they say when their Catullus walked that way. Ernest muses that there are those who think that storytelling is effortless, and those who believe it entails dreadful wear and tear, lacerating self-exposure and self-vampirism. An old storyteller ...”

“... but this didn’t deter Horowitz. As he read the Newport Mercury, the Knickerbocker and Arthur’s Home Magazine, ‘slowly, among these hundreds and then thousands of stories, using a set of critical discriminators, I began to identify what I thought might be stories written by Henry James.’ He then subjected his hunches to rigorous stylometric ...”

“... Its drays, loaded with casks and drawn by shire horses which also did a stint pulling the lord mayor’s coach, were still on the streets when we moved there in the 1960s. They won’t return. But troops of horses of the Household Cavalry, which woke us when we lived off Portobello Road, can still be encountered on their early morning journeys across ...”

“... 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 ...”