“... both countries renounced their foreign rulers, the Dutch finally breaking free from what they held to be the Popish tyranny of Spanish rule, the English Parliament repudiating what it held to be the Popish tyranny of the house of Stuart. To the common interest of Protestantism was thus added the common interest of ...”

“... it dawn on me – for this was a time of Labour electoral triumphs – what bad news these data held for Labour. Take, for example, Bill Rodgers and Roy Jenkins (both grammar school and Oxford, Jenkins the son of a miner MP) not to mention Shirley Williams (professional parents, St Paul’s and Oxford): social mobility had already carried them to Labour’s ...”

“... and her husband had made their home a ‘proletarian salon’ for Jewish immigrants and regularly held political meetings. At one of them Meir met Morris Myerson, a sign painter who gave her long lists of books to read, and whom she eventually married. She returned to Milwaukee at her father’s insistence, but the exposure to new ideas and debates about ...”

“... to have been foreseen from the time of my birth, for they gave me a couple of good Jewish names, David and Bernard, but preceded them with Anthony. I was always called Tony. This perhaps went well with the sort of role my mother wanted me to play. When I was eight she said she would like me to have a career like Noël Coward’s; later she suggested that I ...”

“... from among the large volume of information that the police received: Jamie Acourt, Neil Acourt, David Norris and Gary Dobson. The names came from unreliable sources – an ex-girlfriend, youths with grudges against them. All four had been suspects in connection with previous acts of racial violence. Despite a barrage of teenage estate gossip with all the ...”

“... as William Empson did in the introduction to the selection of Coleridge’s poems he edited with David Pirie: ‘Coleridge wrote only a few very good poems.’ Debate has turned essentially on the question of which those poems were. Defending the edition he was by then at work on, Mays outlined in a 1996 lecture what he meant by his title, ‘Coleridge’s ...”

“... in his Bromley and Chislehurst constituency. A couple of months earlier, another Conservative MP, David Morris, apologised for lobbying on behalf of an energy firm that had given him £10,000. Morris had urged the energy minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, to lobby Ofgem to change regulations in ways that could benefit Aquind Limited, which is seeking to build an ...”

“... just a few doors down from the offices of UnHerd, an online publication he also owns – and held a meeting with the magazine’s staff, at which he complained that the UK’s broadcast media had a left-wing bias. Two weeks later he installed Michael Gove, an old ally, as editor.Marshall, whose fortune is estimated at £875 million, is also Britain’s ...”

“... Russians around the Black Sea coast – two decades earlier, the ambitious young British diplomat David Urquhart had been sacked for making such an attempt in Circassia, just east of the Crimea, which Russia was then trying to subjugate. British and French caution reflected an anxiety that a Balkan war of nationalities would destroy Ottoman rule. At the 1856 ...”

“... with strangers and their stories, flitting from one intense interest to another, even as they held on stubbornly to ideas for years until the money and the creatives could be married and a film born.The back office deity of that era was the seven-times-married Robert Evans, who ran production at Paramount for a decade from 1966, when the studio made The ...”

“... under President Obama. The women were also protesting against the conditions in which they were held. In 2015, Women for Refugee Women had published a pamphlet describing those conditions under the title I Am Human. It asked why, for example, women in detention were being watched in intimate situations – in the toilet or the shower, or in bed – by male ...”

“... David Hume once remarked that the English had the least national character of any people in the universe. Perhaps this was a cunning Scottish put-down, since character is just what the English pride themselves on. They may not bestride the world in intellect, cuisine or emotional intimacy, but these fancy pursuits can be left to foreigners, and don’t count for much compared to their own moral robustness ...”

“... line? The retention of Normandy and the ancestral Plantagenet lands in Aquitaine as territories held in full sovereignty, independent of the French crown? Or was his claim, through Edward III, to the crown of France never to be renounced? Was the continued partition of France between the houses of Lancaster and Valois a viable solution? We will never ...”

“... rushed from church to church, singing psalms and smashing images. Two days later, the reformers held their first sermon in the town cathedral, now purified of the paintings and statues they believed tempted churchgoers into idolatry or lust. The Beeldenstorm, the ‘storm of images’ that swept across the Netherlands in 1566, affected almost every town in ...”

“... answer would include the English victory at Neville’s Cross the same year, which ended with King David II of Scotland a prisoner in the Tower, to be joined ten years later, after Poitiers, by King John II of France. Some might argue – and professional historians no doubt prefer multi-factored answers – that the tide turned even earlier, in 1332, at the ...”