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“... too much of a stretch, in the age of saints and scholars, that golden, undivided time before the Norman invasion, in which case the cat could be anything at all: the playful cipher, sitting on a very inert, territorial mat. No – scratch all that – this is just a very truthful, very real sentence (look at those nouns!) containing both masculine ...”

“... It’s thought that her presence saved the lives of the other staff on several occasions. Norman Cigar and Paul Williams argue that war crimes prosecutions are necessary not simply for the well-rehearsed reasons – ending cultures of impunity, achieving ‘closure’, restoring faith in due process – but because they seek to establish individual ...”

“... Not​ many people have heard of Norman Borlaug, but his invention – the high-yield, short-straw wheat that fuelled the Green Revolution – is consumed every day by the majority of humans on the planet. Without Borlaug’s wheat, there would be no modern food as we know it. Everything from sandwiches to pizza to soy sauce to animal feed is manufactured from wheats adapted from Borlaug’s ...”

“... the plot in a dozen places. Well, what about Chibnall the butler, engaged to Vera, barmaid at the Rose and Crown? Surely we shall be able to confine Chibnall to his butlerine duties and omit vapid Vera altogether? No, not a chance. If Vera doesn’t report that J.B. Duff’s moustache is false (Chibnall had come into her bar unexpectedly and seen her stroking ...”

“... Huizinga saw the Malleus maleficarum as the outcome of ‘medieval thought’ rather than – as Norman Cohn and others have shown – of conditions peculiar to the later 15th century and the two centuries that followed. Another example is medieval saints. For Huizinga they were ‘timeless’, whereas shifting models of sainthood are now a busy subject for ...”

“... He was brought up in a North London Jewish family by his grandmother, an eccentric landlady called Rose Corré Isaacs, who didn’t believe in children going to school and was given to pronouncements such as ‘to be bad is good.’ Westwood and McLaren’s son, Joe, who also works in fashion (he founded the lingerie shop Agent Provocateur), was given the ...”

“... from the ‘golden age’ of crime mysteries. Dissolution also owes much to The Name of the Rose, though Umberto Eco’s glum postscript (‘Very little is discovered and the detective is defeated’) does not apply. Shardlake always gets his man (and/or woman).Dissolution introduces readers to Shardlake’s character and the condition of mid-Tudor ...”

“... intelligent with very sexy legs’. From that out-of-the-body vantage-point he shares with God and Norman Mailer, Isherwood looks down on himself and his friend:Yes, my dears, each of you will find the person you came here to look for – the ideal companion to whom you can reveal yourself totally and yet be loved for what you are, not what you pretend to ...”

“... If this goes on, Conservatives will soon have to choose their heroes from a short list of Montague Norman, Lord Eldon, Judge Jeffreys and (possibly) Bonar Law. We are now enjoying the fruits of the monetarist revolution, and the sans-culottes of monetarism seek to deflect criticism by denouncing the alleged follies of the Ancien Régime. So what took place ...”

“... Soames exercised the powers of the Prime Minister with the aid of the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Norman Brook. But the diaries are silent on the crucial weeks, and one wonders whether there is still more to learn about this risky constitutional experiment. What the diaries do show is that Churchill never recovered sufficiently to do his job properly. The ...”

“... Britain; ‘Scotland’ seemed remote, even irrelevant. Nationalism was a creature of the Rose Street twilight – ‘the chip on the shoulder, growing and growing’ (Rayner Heppenstall’s words?) – scowling against the modern world. ‘Homogeneity’ was a function of imperial and wartime pressures, and a marginalisation of the ...”

“... one. In traditional narratives, its losses are balanced out by the progress achieved by Norman rule in the formation of state and nation. In England, Flodden doesn’t appear on the list of iconic national military victories, a list that has always privileged success against the French – at Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt – over victories won on ...”

“... words, citing a characteristic declaration that ‘a bill becomes a law because certain words of Norman French are pronounced in specific circumstances: the same words in other circumstances and synonymous words in the same circumstances would not make law.’ What is being invoked – celebrated – here is a view of allegiance and identity and governance ...”

“... The Archers on Radio 4, so I’m out of touch. I read in the papers that Phil Archer, or at least Norman Painting, who played him, died recently, but is Jill still around? Where’s Shula? What’s with Eddie Grundy? Old Walter Gabriel must be long gone, but what happened to his scapegrace son, Nelson? Are the village shop and post office still open, or does ...”

“... the repertoire of names in regular use began to increase rapidly. As Gothic-looking steeples rose around the country, so medieval-sounding names crowded around the font: Arthur, Walter, Harold and Neville, Ethel, Edith and Dorothy, soon to be supplemented by endless Geoffreys. This remarkable efflorescence has been described as a ‘personalisation’ of ...”