“... that might only be because his epigones have been talking in funny voices ever since. Later on, John Cleese made an almost comparable impact, in the sense that he, too, had clearly got his originality fully worked out in advance. But for everyone else, humour was a craft to be learned, even if the talent was unmistakable. Indeed it can be said that the ...”

“... well as exceptional. O’Connor was still hankering for a partnership of classes in 1848, but as John Belchem says, writing (in somewhat eccentric English) of the fateful year, middle-class opinion was firmly behind the government and its repressive tactics. We may credit revolutionary happenings abroad with a decisive influence: by inspiring Chartists with ...”

“... thinks the same way. These may be provincial views but they are not necessarily mistaken. Pope John Paul evidently does not think they are. His journey to Central America was that of an enraged (and conceivably ill-advised) chief constable come to impose order on an unruly populace and on his own badly-disciplined rank and file. The plaza where the Pope ...”

“... circus-masters developed a habit of giving to ordinary dwarfs the name of Lilliputians). Captain John Biddel, who brought Gulliver back from Lilliput in his ship, was apparently not so scrupulous as Gulliver. According to T.H. White, he brought away quantities of Blefuscan and Lilliputian people for exhibition ‘among the Fair Grounds of the Kingdom’, but ...”

“... is that of Walter Bagehot, the Victorian journalist and banker, still believed in by Mr St John-Stevas. She even refers in more than one place to ‘St Bagehot’, which I fear reflects the uncritical adoration this smart performer received in academic quarters in the Packenhams’ youth. The essence of Bagehot’s view is that the Queen is merely an ...”

“... style’, and whole new lines of children’s toys appeared glor-ifying the Boers and ridiculing John Bull. Even the pacifist Tolstoy was caught up in the wild enthusiasm for the war: ‘You know what point I’ve reached? Opening a paper every morning I passionately wish to read that the Boers have beaten the British.’ He knew that he ‘should not ...”

“... power relations. Hobbes’s ulterior aim was, of course, to defend a form of absolutism, extending John Selden’s thought that, in a household, only one man’s there to buy the meat. But Hobbes’s views about meaning threaten to prove subversive. Counterfactuals – imagined possibilities – can be used to challenge the status quo. Invert hegemony ...”

“... between danger and secrets? Between secrets and waste? DeLillo’s novel, like recent novels by John Updike and Philip Roth with more openly ironic and regretful titles (The Lilies of the Field , American Pastoral ), confronts and re-creates American history. The very word ‘history’ keeps flashing through Underworld as if it were an omen or a ...”

“... flock of pigeons in Washington Square. He knows the birds by name: Big Bosom, Lady Astor, St John the Baptist, Polly Adler, Fiorello. He wanders from saloon to saloon cadging beers, sandwiches and cash. Most important, he adds to his work-in-progress, a mysterious book that he calls ‘The Oral History of Our Time’. This massive, encompassing volume, a ...”

“... Buenos Aires, hoping to fly on across the Andes, there was good news and bad. Michael Brunson and John Humphrys had hired a large plane from Aerolineas Argentinas, on behalf of ITN and the BBC, and they were leaving for Santiago late that night. The new Chilean authorities had promised to open the frontier the following morning, and for a payment of ...”

“... about these leonine adventures (which led to Cobb’s forced retirement in August 1938) was Dr John Colin Carothers, the central figure in this study. McCulloch came to know Carothers while working on this book and the retired psychiatrist provided him with access to much material as well as allowing himself to be interviewed. We may assume that much of ...”

“... from their father than they themselves ever raised or gave away. In The Black Book, the radical John Wade opined that the Crown was the premier beneficiary of the nation’s benevolence – a view, Prochaska notes, ‘which had much to recommend it’. Throughout her reign, Queen Victoria received many legacies as well as intestate estates in the Duchy of ...”

“... and far better written account of Picasso’s life with her will be found in the essay by John Richardson reprinted in the catalogue of the Tate Gallery’s Late Picasso exhibition. It must be said, however, that an impartial view is hardly possible if one is dependent, as all serious Picasso scholars are, on the good will of one or another faction ...”

“... with a legion of flies, before returning to pose the question. The first part was answered by John Foster Dulles, the US Secretary of State at the time of the misbegotten federation. ‘From the point of view of justice,’ he said, ‘the opinions of the Eritrean people must receive consideration. Nevertheless the strategic interests of the United States ...”

“... German interests were on a collision course. As the biographers of Baldwin, Keith Middlemas and John Barnes, observed, ‘the government had awakened to a danger that had nothing to do with any question of marriage.’ Charles Higham quotes an FBI file in Washington: ‘Certain would-be state secrets were passed on to Edward, and when it was found that ...”