“... to Thompson’s interest through the correspondence columns of the TLS. In the loft Thompson found more than a hundred boxes containing the Muggletonian archive, which Noakes, on a wartime journey to Covent Garden market, had rescued when the Muggletonian Reading Room in Bishopsgate was blitzed. These boxes have now found a home in the British Library as ...”

“... the 1590s, some of them very distinguished, and of their efforts to exclude one who would become more distinguished than any of them. Blackfriars is an area rich in Shakespearean associations, invisible but well attested. Down an alleyway running south off Carter Lane lies New Bell Yard. Now dominated by the glass-fronted atrium of the Grange St Paul’s ...”

“... confidence to a state of society in which the different orders and classes of men will contribute more effectively to the support of each other than they have hitherto done.’ The essential structure of society, however, would remain unaltered: scientific progress would demonstrate more clearly than ever that ‘the ...”

“... idea that parents weren’t attached to their children touched a nerve among medievalists. More than thirty years ago, pioneering work by Shulamith Shahar and Barbara Hanawalt showed conclusively that Ariès was wrong. Not only did medieval people have a concept of childhood, adapting the sequential model of the ‘Ages of Man’ from classical ...”

“... tainted by liberation theology. Gerardi told the local army chief that the soldiers were killing more people than the guerrillas were, and that the military’s lawless actions were recruiting civilians to the guerrillas’ cause. One night in July 1980 the bishop was smuggled out of a village along a mountain path to avoid an army ambush that had been set ...”

“... visceral reaction many people have against it, in spite of its being much less destructive than more traditional forms of military violence. Drones, or UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), are more selective in the killing of enemies, produce less collateral damage to non-combatants and impose no physical risk to those who ...”

“... of power. The ways in which reality is tweaked in Enigma (1995), Harris’s second novel, are more modest. As in Fatherland, the Germans have somehow ascertained that the British are able to decipher the codes produced by their Enigma machines. The man recalled to Bletchley Park to enable the British to regain the upper hand in the cryptographic struggle ...”

“... that had come about since their last sojourn. In 1292, in Shropshire, Alice Knotte complained that Thomas Champeneys ‘detaineth from her seven shillings in money and a surcoat of the value of three shillings’. ‘Alice can get no justice at all,’ she protested, ‘seeing that she is poor and that this Thomas is ...”

“... and divorce. That sort of thing. Then there are the things we think about every day. It’s much more likely that we’re going to come up with TV-movie-of-the-week responses about the big things because we haven’t had practice with them. I write about the little things because we’ve usually come to some interesting conclusions about them, we’ve ...”

“... and I went to Wexford for the launch of a new history of the 1798 Rising, The Year of Liberty by Thomas Pakenham. The Rising was important for us: from our housing estate we could see Vinegar Hill where ‘our side’, the rebels, had made their last stand. From early childhood I knew certain things (I hesitate to say ‘facts’) about the Rising: how the ...”

“... galley, the truly superior beings should strive to be masters, not slaves: ‘Not contentment, but more power; not peace at all, but war; not virtue, but proficiency.’ A stronger type of human being would tear off the veil of hypocrisy, otherwise known as reason and moral virtue, do away with guilt, celebrate instinct, preach violence and follow the call of ...”

“... resemblance – suggested, too, in the solemn tone of the Zone Three chronicler – to an idea Thomas Mann used in his fable The Transposed Heads. A fable has to match invention to idea, and all with perfect simplicity. It would be easy to conclude that Doris Lessing isn’t as good at this as Thomas Mann. The dynastic ...”

“... but were divided over which English one to choose. We sight-read a massive six-voice piece by Thomas Weelkes, ‘Thule, the Period of Cosmographie’, with its second part, ‘The Andalusian Merchant’. But it was too difficult; we rehearsed another by Weelkes instead. I wondered why ‘Thule’ was so hard. I sang it with the piano. I bought a CD. Most ...”

“... US), while the Arden edition of King Lear is ranked 13,791 (309,493 in the US). People are a lot more likely to buy books about Shakespeare’s life than they are to buy books by Shakespeare. The money generated in this way never gets through to Mr Shakespeare, of course, though he did well enough out of his commercial interests in the theatre. William ...”

“... You can see the glisten on his skin from too much canary wine, and the warts and blemishes which more malicious caricaturists like Thomas Dekker dwell on: ‘a face full of pockey-holes and pimples ... a most ungodly face, like a rotten russet apple when ’tis bruised’. You can confirm that, as Aubrey noted, he had one ...”