“... that ‘it is never right to play ragtime fast.’ The music’s dignified, shimmering figures may have provoked discreet tapping of the feet, or been deemed suitable for novelty dances like the cakewalk, but it aimed at the sort of gentility implied by titles such as ‘Gladiolus Rag’, and ‘Heliotrope Bouquet’. Embodying almost the reverse of the ...”

“... time to worry about the future of the periwig industry, since nobody will dare to buy hair which may have been cut from plague victims. Good for Pepys, the historian; an article in the Companion volume says that Dryden and Milton left us only six lines about the plague between them. It is hard to read the diary for the years 1665 to 1667 without being ...”

“... it gave for respectable touching (amplified by much mutual rubbing in of embrocation afterwards) may well have been – as Jock Phillips suggests writing of 19th-century New Zealand, but with a sidelong glance at the English public schools – a source of comforting closeness in a society where women were scarce or marginalised and the taboo against ...”

“... having been a hotbed of hatred towards Jews since well before the great expulsion of 1492: ‘we may better understand the expansion of the Inquisition, and of the peculiar compound of feelings that impelled it, if we consider the case of Nazi Germany and the evolution of the movement that created it.’ Anti-semitism in both Spain and Germany is taken to be ...”

“... to mention Post-Modernist, approaches. There is not a shadow of psychoanalysis to be found. Some may think that this is all to the good, but whether a political approach can do justice to such a complex and powerful story – in particular to its first segment, with its emotive abandonment and salvation of the infant twins – seems dubious. This is a ...”

“... have to be asked repeatedly, even though there has never been, nor ever will be an answer. They may be addressed to another person, but it is just as likely that they are spoken aloud to an empty chair when no one else is present. Certain questions have to be articulated, made real and sent off pulsing into the ether. When another person is present they ...”

“... go around snatching your money. INTERVIEWER: I appreciate that, Sir Arthur. SIR ARTHUR: You may appreciate that but most people don’t. If you like your money being snatched, you must be rather an odd fish I think. Harry Thompson takes up a lot of space discussing Peter’s politics. He was claimed (ludicrously) by the Liberal Party, and at different ...”

“... in the era of European expansion. Leafing through the atlases of a previous generation, we may draw comfort from the thought that all the pink bits (and other hues of Empire) once displayed with such pride were to vanish rather quickly. Yet their very presence, symbolic of the innumerable battles in which a handful of small European nations engaged and ...”

“... artist and as a person, and this despite the fact that her biography aims to allay such doubts. It may seem odd to ask whether a poet whose mind was an inexhaustible source of sparkling similes and metaphors had a rich inner life; but Stainton evidently has her misgivings about Lorca’s natural frivolity. She takes more note than Gibson of his disastrous ...”

“... that while sea ice moves with the wind, the deep-keeled icebergs move with the current, and so may plough a course through the frozen surface. Ships may seek out the wake of an iceberg and take advantage of this passage through open water. A polar bear’s understanding of ice has been honed and refined over thousands of ...”

“... more often floury or waxy than glazed; the objects are solidly there, sparingly translucent. They may glow, they do not glitter. Matisse had to have the real thing – girl or oyster – in front of him when he painted. And it had to be fresh: for one still-life he renewed his oysters every day and had a boy on hand to water the fish for another. The results ...”

“... sickness – ‘Did you think missionaries always were bright and happy and hopeful? Well, there may be some of that kind but they are not out here’ – and in 1900, during the Boxer Uprising, she, her husband and their daughter were all killed, seemingly by Government troops. The East travelled to the West, though not in any missionary spirit, when ...”

“... to them as a source of divine blessing’. They agreed and solemnly recorded their pious hopes: May our children and descendants in the future be guided by the same aim, so that with the constant maintenance of unity the House of Rothschild may blossom and grow into full ripeness ... and ...”

“... in new worlds. The discovery of a few scattered and impoverished islands in the Atlantic may have aroused geographical curiosity throughout Europe, but it did nothing to increase either the wealth or power of Spain. They wanted what their Portuguese rivals had been looking for: a trade-route to the East, if possible a legitimate supply of slaves ...”

“... looked as if they had been made from blankets), new clothes gave him a heart-pumping thrill. He may have been hard up, but he wanted several cashmere sweaters, a dark blue jacket and a pair of saddle shoes. Late one night he broke into a dry-cleaner’s and took everything that fitted. It was dark in the shop and the booty was disappointing, for the most ...”