“... largely eccentric. Baden-Powell appears in Fussell’s essay, ‘Kingy and some Coevals’, about Edward VII and certain Edwardians. In pro-British mood, Fussell wants to defend them against modern mockery – ‘not that, with the exception of Baden-Powell, they are easy to like. Lord Northcliffe seems a gift to the satirist ... ’ Baden-Powell, so Fussell ...”

“... conflict of interest in simultaneously being agent and employer.’ When the actress Jennifer Jones’s alcoholic first husband died after an injection given by a dodgy psychiatrist, Selznick, who was in love with her and would marry her after a decent interval, was desperate to manage the publicity. He got his way by creating a cover story saying that it ...”

“... of his fellow Classical historians, among whom he commonly refers favourably only to A.H.M. Jones and P.A. Brunt. Sir Moses Finley is rarely mentioned except to be criticised. His aim is ‘first (in Part One) to explain, and then (in Part Two) to illustrate, the value of Marx’s general analysis of society in relation to the ancient Greek World.’ He ...”

“... figure of them all, the Prince of Wales, who became Lewis’s personal friend. The future King Edward sought legal advice from him in connection with, among other embarrassments to the cherished image of royalty as the seat of virtue, the sticky Mordaunt divorce case, in which the Prince was forced to testify, and the Tranby Croft cheating-at-baccarat ...”

“... only as members of the new office-holding and courtly nobility that grew up under Henry VIII and Edward VI. The standard of living to which they then grew accustomed became a heavy burden under Elizabeth, whose favours to the family were intermittent and grudging. From the late 16th century to the late 17th – from the time of Sir Philip Sidney to that of ...”

“... had already proved impossible: in 1553, the last year of the reign of Elizabeth’s brother, Edward VI, an English expedition had tried to sail to China round the north of Russia. Most of the sailors froze to death near present-day Murmansk, but some of them made it to Moscow, where they struck a trade deal with Ivan the Terrible – nearly as good as a ...”

“... When the story reaches 1975, the artist draws the two fictional Tories acting as bookmakers, while Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher are harnessed as racehorses. The Parliamentary history recorded in First Among Equals begins in 1964 and concludes in 1991. Since Jeffrey Archer served in Parliament from 1969 to 1974, he offers here the benefit of his ...”

“... Queen of Romania, Queen Victoria’s third son, the Duke of Connaught, and less frequently King Edward VII. Rose quotes one of Nancy’s ‘most celebrated bons mots’: when invited by the King to play bridge, she is said to have refrained with the claim: ‘Why I don’t even know the difference between a King and a Knave.’ The author rightly thinks ...”

“... gentlemen, I think we all fought a good fight …’ Trog (Wally Fawkes) was compounded by Edward Heath, who described a party political broadcast located in Macmillan’s country house, where the government’s record is assessed by its top men: And Harold said: ‘Well now, Rab, I think we’ve done very well, don’t you?’ And Rab said: ‘Oh ...”

“... In Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, the narrator contemplates the words of passion used by Edward Ashburnham to a young girl, Nancy, and his need to speak them, and what happened once these words were spoken aloud: ‘It was as if his passion for her hadn’t existed; as if the very words that he spoke, without knowing that he spoke them, created the ...”

“... to take control of Aden in 1839, and to appoint him its political agent there. Another, Felix Jones, commanded the armed steamer that the British used to patrol the Tigris and lower Euphrates in the 1840s and 1850s. Its size, engine power and regular gun and mortar practice had remarkable success in disciplining the Arab tribes on the riverbanks. During a ...”

“... and selling find a common voice, as Selfridges does palatially in Oxford Street and Peter Jones does without bombast in Sloane Square. In Regent Street, Liberty came closest, but (despite a couple of Japanese bronzes on the front) only the timber-framed extension behind is really consonant with the store’s Oriental and Arts and Crafts ...”

“... sixth-form Spanish/French class about the Civil War and Surrealism. Went on to pick up Hilda and Edward Upward and take them out to lunch at a Shanklin restaurant. They’re not so indignant about Bush and the war as I’d expected them to be. Their CND fervour seems to have abated. It must be twenty years since ...”

“... by the West’s hatred of Islam. The actions of a few fringe figures such as Pastor Terry Jones who do indeed seem to hate Islam are then cited as supporting evidence. One aspect of the US’s use of torture, incidentally, has received too little attention. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded no fewer than 183 times. At some point he worked out ...”

“... the first time, linked with ancient texts on ‘uterine suffocation’, as we see most notably in Edward Jorden’s anti-Puritan tract, A briefe discourse of a disease called the suffocation of the Mother (1603). Here, hysteria is possession de-demonised with the help of Hippocrates’ gynaecological theories. If it is indeed true that hysteria comes into ...”