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“... Daniels, the Sainsburys, the Guinnesses, the Marks and the Spencers, and of course dear old Mister Gordon and his fine distillery. These many named and unnamed of the acknowledgment pages are the foundations on which a book is built: they help to determine its size and shape, its character and its content, and they deserve our attention. When Helen Vendler ...”

“... many of their forebears left their homelands by choice. So why had Chrissie said that her forebear Mary Ann MacNeill (née MacCormick) was ‘cleared’? Those last islands had been drawing me for most of my life, not because of the hearty ‘Heel-yo-ho, boys’ of the ‘Mingulay Boat Song’, a foreign invention of the Thirties, but because they represented ...”

“... 17 May. Niall thinks the big house may have been a manse. I hope to find out more when I call on Mary Kate MacInnes in Glean tomorrow. We spend the day on Vatersay to the south. I went there with my wife in 1988 on a wee ferry shared with a collie dog, a bag of potatoes and a bag of onions. Now the narrows of the kyle are bridged by a ...”

“... as badly hurt as she was by the subsequent break-up of her wartime affair with the radio writer Gordon Glover. Robert Liddell, in his contribution to Dale Salwak’s volume, objects to too tragic a view of ‘Barbara’s hobby (generally enjoyable) of “unrequited love” ’, and as a friend of hers since 1932 his view has to be taken ...”

“... a Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology under the chairmanship of Mary Warnock, ‘to consider recent and potential developments in medicine and science related to human fertilisation and embryology; and to consider what policies and safeguards should be applied, including consideration of the social, ethical and legal ...”

“... Monticello, had experienced a substantial increase in visitor numbers after the historian Annette Gordon-Reed established beyond doubt the Hemings connection. In the apparent belief that visitors’ imaginations need to be stirred even further, a room at Monticello next to Jefferson’s bedroom is now identified as Hemings’s living quarters, although the ...”

“... of novels and short stories published; but fame came to her through a play written under the name Gordon Daviot. Richard of Bordeaux, about Richard II, was a huge West End hit in the early 1930s; it made the name of the young John Gielgud, who also directed; Ffrangcon-Davies was Queen Anne. Tey never managed to follow up its crazy success; Ffrangcon-Davies ...”

“... of all the debutantes promenading into print and creating a stir: Donna Tartt, David Leavitt, Mary Gaitskill, Lorrie Moore, Amy Hempel, Nancy Lemann, Susan Minot, Mary Robison, Anderson Ferrell – a cast of dozens. Many of those rookies trained at the literary dojo of the author, editor, creative writing teacher and ...”

“... When he became an exemplary City magistrate, defending the Bank of England against the Gordon Rioters, there was little comment. When he became a steady supporter of George Ill’s friends after 1782, no one was surprised. At one point, he reputedly whispered an apology to Lord North for all the trouble he had caused. It was the English ...”

“... gloss seems a long way from Bloomsbury. Vanessa Bell disliked smartness. Inspecting the Queen Mary, in 1936, she was not only miffed at the inappropriately small room in which her large panel had been placed, but, to quote Frances Spalding, ‘marvelled at its effective line in slick vulgarity and took particular dislike to the extensive reliefs, painted ...”

“... of this terrible hour a neat middle-aged woman stopped at the foot of Mam’s bed. ‘It’s Mary, love. I’m off now. They’ve just rung me a taxi.’ She turned to me: ‘Could you just go and see if it’s come.’ I went out into the entrance hall, cheered that one of these desperate women could by a stay in such unpromising surroundings be ...”

“... Tanganyika, but ‘proved that East Africa was a woman’s country too’. She was followed by Mary Hall, who insisted on being called ‘Miss’, and emulated Grogan’s Cape-to-Cairo safari. She had taken up travel for her health years before and was now in her late forties. Without servants or companion, scantly guarded by two askaris, but employing ...”

“... Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded in 1587. English observers, anxious about James VI of Scotland’s reaction to his mother’s execution, were alarmed to discover that the greatest of the Scottish Catholic peers, George Gordon, Sixth Earl of Huntly, was rapidly becoming his chief confidant ...”

“... remark with which he earlier accounts for Senhouse’s avoidance of him in a letter to his cousin Mary Hutchinson: ‘There must be something tiresome about me, when seen very near at hand.’ ‘All decent people remain young for an incredible length of time and suffer accordingly,’ Strachey wrote to Senhouse in 1929: ‘It would certainly show that there ...”

“... in London were penicillin-resistant. By early 1947 the percentage had tripled. The bacteriologist Mary Barber showed that this rise was not due to the development of resistance while patients were being treated, but to the spread of a penicillin-resistant strain in the hospital. Some staphylococci had the ability to make penicillinase, a penicillin-destroying ...”