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“... letters from Lord Burghley, the Queen’s chief adviser, begging him to return home ‘to honour Her Majesty … with the fruits of such great knowledge as God hath given him’. Or if he could not personally return, perhaps he might send her a small quantity of his gold-making powder, ‘in some secret box’, just ...”

“... Queen Elizabeth I … did not need special measures, advancement and protection to get her going; she did it through her own vim and vigour … Does the lord chancellor recall that in the reign of Henry VIII it was made high treason to take an appeal outside this kingdom? … I think one can take back the ...”

“... like were never known or read of in any age, all which I can show unto you. They were delivered to Her Highness, and command given by herself to prosecute it to the full. To paraphrase: Drury was commanded to search out his former acquaintance Richard Baines and get a certain ‘secret’ from him. This secret was information about the author of the Dutch ...”

“... II Door ajar to the great actress’s cabana at Nazimova’s Garden of Allah, she lies back on her chaise longue, gently running a finger along her glistening auburn lanugo, while, at the same time, changing stations on the radio until she arrives at Amos and Andy, ...”

“... toast, a smear of butter and a thin layer of dark, chunky marmalade’, since you ask. She enters her dining-room every morning prompt at nine o’clock, ‘carrying her old-fashioned Roberts radio tuned permanently to BBC Radio 2’. One of her two personal footmen (Burrell, from April ...”

“... it.’ A more accommodating view of the fleetingness of his language was taken by Hilda Hulme in her great study of aspects of Shakespeare’s language left unrecorded in the OED: double-meaning … is of special value to the dramatist as part of the never-again-ness of his language; reader and ‘auditor’ are kept alert and required to accept as part of ...”

“... legal protection to the young, the English painter Thomas Gotch portrayed his young daughter in majesty like a Madonna by Duccio, with a huge nimbus around her head, and called the image The Child Enthroned. Concurrently, the Swiss Ferdinand Hodler celebrated the birth of his son with an equally awed work, The Chosen ...”

“... There is panegyric: on Cromwell (Heroic Stanzas), on Charles II (Astraea Redux, To His Sacred Majesty), on the new baby heir to James II (Britannia Rediviva); though never on William and Mary. Theological disputation, first Anglican in complexion (Religio Laici), then Roman Catholic (The Hind and the Panther). Historical chronicle (Annus ...”

“... corsairs, but how could Gondomar reject the offer politely? His solution was audacious: if His Majesty was so committed to the worthy aim of the elimination of piracy, what better way could there be of demonstrating that commitment than bringing to justice the notorious pirate Sir Walter Ralegh? Gondomar had already returned to Spain by the time of ...”

“... around for the vote, I know, but as little more than an accusing spectre. Within less than half of her own reign the glamour of Monarchy has vanished. All that the Crown now accomplishes is to counterpoint and somehow exaggerate an ambient unreality: the new, motherless country left behind by its moral decease. Through Queenly spectacles the past looks at the ...”

“... of the House of Commons. Within two years he had become Elizabeth’s solicitor general and then her attorney general, a post in which he achieved celebrity as a foul-tempered prosecutor, first of the Earl of Essex, then of Sir Walter Raleigh (‘Thou viper … thou hast an English face but a Spanish heart!’) and of the Gunpowder plotters. With the help of ...”

“... Carolly Erickson’s study Great Harry does not therefore have to justify its existence. In her Preface, Dr Erickson carefully lays down both her aims and her methods. Her principal aim is ‘the retelling of Henry’s personal story ... a life of ...”

“... political history of the anti-Americanism that comes to us so easily? Before leftist subjects of Her Majesty get snooty about American democracy, we might stop and wonder whose interests are served by our unshakable optimism about the past. The unguarded naiveties of Achieving Our Country are not quite as negligent as they look, and the book may well ...”

“... easy for the artist to adjust the appearance of the sitter to the requirements of his or her social role. Occasionally it is possible to catch Velazquez in the act of doing just this, as in the cases of Juan Mateos, the royal huntsman, and the sculptor Juan Martinez Montanes (neatly juxtaposed by Brown with less flattering representations of the same ...”

“... it in there with the chopsticks yearning to contribute in a non-confrontational way to Miss X & her sister & her sister’s Awful Husband’s conversazione on blue fin versus yellow fin and then the ‘whole environmental thing’ (this from a cunt who ate a turtle in Indonesia) I was saying nothing – I’m saying ...”