“... of other enlightened travellers, including William Marsden’s History of Sumatra (1783) and Arthur Young’s studies of French agriculture (1787-89), were intended as major contributions to knowledge. Marsden’s work was inspired by his regular attendance at the Royal Society’s ‘philosophical breakfasts’ in Soho Square.There were equally ...”

“... of description and stolen lines of song. In ‘When it’s time to go’, she quotes ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’: ‘O great classic cadences of English poetry/We blush to hear thee lie/Above thy deep and dreamless.’ (Here the word ‘lie’ is given its double entendre.) One poem is called ‘A Misremembered Lyric’. There’s also ...”

“... came out in the end, but does it always do so? No one knows to this day about the murder of the little princes in the tower, although Tudor propaganda inclines us now to think that it was Henry VII and not Richard III who did them in. Shakespeare’s efforts are just as counter-productive here as any claim by the ministry of lies. In that context one of the ...”

“... Ataturk’s Turkey and in some ways anticipated Suez, the leader of the Canadian Opposition, Arthur Meighen, had said that Canada’s attitude should be summed up in the words; ‘Ready, aye ready.’ Australia under Menzies did not fit entirely into that pattern. The book’s one weakness is that its author clearly did not have the chance to visit the ...”

“... seems to be in the same boat. So how much paranoia should we have? A modest answer would be: as little as we can manage, whatever amount allows us to make sense of the world – individual thresholds would of course be different, like thresholds of pain. Another answer would involve exploring paranoia itself as a symptom, which is what Don DeLillo does in ...”

“... and out of love’, which did not require physical requital in her case, she later insisted to Arthur Balfour that ‘I was no man’s mistress and never had a lover in my life.’ Margot and her beloved sister, Laura, conspired that they would both marry young, especially after a gypsy fortune-teller had proffered assurances that Margot was destined to be ...”

“... serviceable but perfunctory and poorly-written ‘quickie’ with no clear view of its subject and little understanding of the politics of the Labour Party. Robert Harris’s is longer, fuller and excellently researched: among the sources he has been able to see and uses very well are the GMC minutes of the Bedwellty Constituency Labour Party; he is thoroughly ...”

“... might be performed. In this process of spiritual colonisation, the Catholic clergy showed little compunction about taking over former pagan sanctuaries and appropriating their numinous aura. As Pope Gregory the Great remarked in his instructions of 601 for the Christian conversion of England, people were more likely to worship in places with which ...”

“... slipstream, craving his attention and his praise; they were all highly intelligent, with little formal education; and they all had a taste for (to borrow the title of Diana Holderness’s recent memoir) ‘the Ritz and the Ditch’ – in other words, for the high life and the low life. They’d be dining at the Ritz (usually at someone else’s ...”

“... Riding’s fast-paced account sticks roughly with Poole and Bend’s interpretations, but puts a little more emphasis on the home secretary’s desire to crush the popular movement. She agrees that Peterloo was a massacre. Conservative interpretations have previously indulged in some pedantry about this because the number of deaths did not reach the ...”

“... industry and enthusiasm evoke admiration, but perhaps a general reader needs something a little lighter, more sceptical, more historically-orientated. No such problems arise with Mr Fowles’s short and elegant essay on Stonehenge, which is part history and archaeology, part literary exercise and part moral philosophy. Mr Fowles seems to have been ...”

“... III knew that it wasn’t enough to host a round table linking his reign with the legend of King Arthur, as he did at Windsor in 1358. For maximum effect, he also sent heralds to announce the event abroad. Medieval public relations had to be managed just as carefully as their modern equivalents. Edward II tried to curtail minstrel activity, possibly to quash ...”

“... through their rubbish. At the end of the 19th century, two Oxford academics, Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt, set off for the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus in search of Greek texts written on papyrus. Over six seasons, assisted by scores of local workmen, they excavated thousands of papyri from the city’s rubbish mounds and transported them to ...”

“... me to treat fiction-as-art as a happy accident rather than a desideratum. And if there is too little fiction-as-art for fiction-addicted adults, how much less for children! Tot up all the children’s novels commended by Bratton, Inglis and Tucker, divide them by the ones available to a child at any particular stage of its development, and there will be ...”

“... not being entirely in possession of his means, in a kind of writing relatively new to him, does little to lessen the worth of his living gratitude. Since he is what used to be called a good hater and a bonny fighter (‘I am happy in my glittering envelope, and will fight those who would puncture it,’ ‘I am not prepared to give up my inheritance without ...”