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“... as a metaphysical doctrine, it was designed to stabilise both state and monarchy. As set out in Elizabeth I’s reign it decreed that The King has in him two Bodies, viz, a Body natural, and a Body politic. His Body natural (if it be considered in itself) is a Body mortal, subject to all Infirmities … But his Body politic is a Body that cannot be seen or ...”

“... forms of lay superstition that Church authorities sought to discourage. In 1448 John Dixson, a cook, was hauled before inquisitors of the bishop of Lincoln ‘for invocations of malign spirits, in order to find stolen goods’. He was said to have placed a key inside a psalter, along with ‘a bill containing the names of those who were suspected’; if ...”

“... her three sisters were born into an upper-middle-class London family: her father (whose sister, Elizabeth, became Lady Longford; Antonia Fraser is Harman’s cousin) was a doctor and her mother had qualified as a barrister, though she gave up work when she had children. Their four daughters were to be educated but marriageable; not too submissive or too ...”

“... Virginia Woolf​ wasn’t sure what she felt when she heard that Katherine Mansfield was dead. The cook, ‘in her sensational way’, had broken the news to her at breakfast: ‘Mrs Murry’s dead! It says so in the paper!’At that one feels – what? A shock of relief? – a rival the less? Then confusion at feeling so little – then, gradually, blankness & disappointment; then a depression which I could not rouse myself from all that day ...”

“... Richardson, Modernist, struggling to light a recalcitrant wood stove or wearing galoshes to cook breakfast in a flooded kitchen. In the Twenties and Thirties, Richardson’s work was frequently linked with that of Joyce and Woolf. By the time of Joyce’s death, his reputation was firmly established. Woolf finally attained prominence in the ...”

“... herself begin to turn people into legends. While still in Arizona she had written to her friend Elizabeth Sergeant, a critic for the New Republic: Dear Elsie: I’ve been hard hit by new ideas of late and am as happy as possible. I’ve caught step at last. Am just back from a long overland trip with the priest out to his Indian missions. A string trio of ...”

“... be poison. Orwell argues that murder is no longer what it used to be, and cites the 1944 case of Elizabeth Jones, an 18-year-old, and an American army deserter, Karl Hulten, who went on a killing spree together, known as the Cleft Chin Murders. They were a Bonnie and Clyde pair, a symptom of the brutality of war and of approaching modernity in dear old ...”

“... Carola Dibbell’s astonishing dystopian novel, published in 2015, The Only Ones.) The squire’s cook is disgusted and made resentful by the imminent birth (‘I can tend a death but I’ve no nerve for birth’) and hands in her notice, something her temporary replacement puts down, in a conversation below stairs, to the nearness of her ...”

“... seen the republication of some American women writers of the mid-to-late 20th century, among them Elizabeth Hardwick, Jean Stafford (these two had been better known as Robert Lowell’s wives) and Lucia Berlin, whose luminous short stories seem to me as good as anyone’s. Now Picador have published Blue in Chicago, a collection of stories by Bette ...”

“... but I enjoyed it. I thought I was too grand to do interviews, but then I was asked to interview Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton on the set of some film. So I said, what the hell, I’ll do it. That initited the interviewing period of my life: I remember coming back and thinking. ‘It’s an absolute doddle, interviewing’ – I mean. ...”

“... or their modus amandi, by which he brought home the bacon and no visitors, while she – with a cook? a maid? – ran the household, cooked and gardened. Was she agoraphobic? Sociopathic? Clinically shy? Guarding his privacy, like a Rilkean wife? And what about him, was he cruel? A Bluebeard of one? Tyrannical? Ashamed? Just obsessively private? Visitors ...”

“... against the Nato action as ‘an unpardonable folly’, not only found himself denounced by Robin Cook as ‘the toast of Belgrade’, but also saw both his Party’s and his own personal poll ratings fall. However, the reassertion of Britishness is not a mere by-product of Balkan contingencies. Scottish Labour’s manifesto has trumpeted the achievements and ...”

“... in his time, and yet who see the truth of his writings just as much as the courtiers of Queen Elizabeth did.’Literary scholars have been readier than historians to explore how Britain’s 350-year connection with extra-European empire shaped and complicated the identities and patriotisms within it. Even now, imperial history is still sometimes pursued ...”

“... had abandoned all his old occupations, or so he claimed, in favour of a ‘new Profession’ as a cook. He would always regret the swagger of the Treatise: ‘The positive air,’ as he called it, ‘which prevails in that book, and which may be imputed to the ardour of youth, so much displeases me, that I have not the patience to review it.’ He liked to ...”

“... windy still almost warm. Between Rupert getting up and him fetching me a cup of tea I reread ‘Elizabeth at Rycote’, an essay in A.L. Rowse’s The English Spirit, published in 1944 and bought, I see from the flyleaf, when I was in Cork in 1963. Rowse figures in it, having walked out from Oxford to Rycote with Bruce McFarlane during the war. Rowse here ...”