“... years in advance and she had a virtual monopoly of super-delegates. If a left-wing Democrat like Elizabeth Warren runs next time she will not face such an opponent. Sanders might well have beaten Trump. And while it would have caused a Democrat civil war, given the ‘entitled’ Clinton bandwagon, Obama probably missed a trick by discouraging Joe Biden from ...”

“... children about, or sell to them, rather than simply give.Lilibet II’s great-great-grandmother Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon could get very caught up in the swooshiness of poetry. She loved going fishing with Ted Hughes. In the long boring afternoons in the Highlands, the hours between kippers and drinkies, poor Ted would take her down to the river and start ...”

“... deaths’ reappear in Philosophy the Day after Tomorrow, again in connection with scepticism. When Elizabeth Bennet receives a letter from Darcy and realises that she has been ‘blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd’, this moment of self-knowledge also represents, Cavell says, her knowledge of being known, of being acknowledged, ‘as if until then her ...”

“... about nature but refuses to call them ‘nature poems’. Her work is ‘full of hymns’, as Elizabeth Bishop said of her own, as well as pagan shouts and birdcalls. Oswald paints wild, stormy miniatures through which large figures lurch, blindfolded and burdened: A mouldering man, a powdered and reconstituted one, walking the same so on and so ...”

“... difference between his approach to biographical writing and that of Lytton Strachey:   In Elizabeth and Essex, Lytton Strachey writes of Francis Bacon: ‘an old man, disgraced, shattered, alone, on Highgate Hill, stuffing a dead fowl with snow.’ The story of stuffing the hen with snow is Aubrey’s, and may be read here. Bacon was certainly an old ...”

“... desert. The other lunettes do not detain Rowland, although it is likely that Saint Elizabeth, Saint Sebastian, Saint Barbara and so on meant as much to the Pope as Catherine did, and more than the story of Apis (or the Ovidian episodes from the tale of Jupiter and Io, ‘Borgia beef in a feminine key’) on the vault above, which would, in the ...”

“... and betrayal in a ruined Camelot, completed as the King was forced to flee into exile in 1470. Elizabeth Woodville, Edward’s ambitious wife, had, it seemed, been his Guinevere: ‘Her beauty and falsehood caused such discord that caused all Arthur’s Court and his princes to be slain.’ Edward’s exile proved brief but, following his decisive return ...”

“... before his murder’ in 1467, and passed through various hands, including those of Elizabeth I – she can be seen wearing the jewel in the ‘Ermine Portrait’ that hangs in Hatfield House – until it was finally lost in the 19th century. In The Love of Stones, the history of the Three Brethren is told by Katharine Sterne, a young woman who ...”

“... most, saying she showed ‘amiability verging on weakness’. He and his new and pregnant wife, Elizabeth, were in Peking during the Boxer Rebellion. Their house was damaged in the fighting, though more by the efforts of amateur firefighters than by the rebels. At one point a messenger he tried to send out of the city was crucified by the Boxers: Henry told ...”

“... there) and had come to feel some Remains-of-the-Day-like affection for one of his supporters, Lady Elizabeth Lindsay. Nothing came of it. She died of pneumonia early in 1937, and the Prof never loved again. Back on the committee, he seems to have behaved better, even being bracketed with Tizard in R.V. Jones’s account of the completion of the radar chain and ...”

“... conviction. It was, after all, Escoffier who instructed his disciples, ‘Faites simple,’ and Elizabeth David who memorialised La Mère Poulard’s response to a Parisian restaurateur’s request for the secret of her famous omelettes at the Auberge de Saint-Michel Tête d’Or: ‘Voici la recette de l’omelette: je casse de bons œufs dans une ...”

“... description more generally. Sometimes Doty describes a work of art (Murano glass, a watercolour by Elizabeth Bishop), sometimes an ordinary object (a second-hand kimono, a crab shell), sometimes a part of the natural world (beaches, horses, dogs), sometimes a man-made scene (gardens, harbours, Times Square). He recognises how fond of description he is, and ...”

“... with many opinions married to a successful businessman. (Florence’s mother has been a friend of Elizabeth David and is a friend of Iris Murdoch.) Both stories are set at a very precise date, with debates about socialism, Britain’s decline as a world power, and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Both works exude a sense, alive in McEwan’s work since ...”

“... tragedy. Ibsen’s great female roles helped a new generation of actors to emerge, including Elizabeth Robins in England, Eleanora Duse in Italy and Eva Le Gallienne in the United States. Even the ageing superstar Sarah Bernhardt appeared in Lady from the Sea in 1906. Meanwhile another set of directors and actors turned to Ibsen for quite different ...”

“... confirmed that it provided no ‘automaticity’. Blair didn’t want to hear about any of this. Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the deputy Foreign Office legal adviser, resigned; her boss, Michael Wood, stoically remained in place and subsequently received a knighthood. Unusually, the holders of the Oxbridge chairs in international law, James Crawford and Vaughan ...”