“... the assassination of the Empress Sisi and the suicide at Mayerling of Crown Prince Rudolf. But Edward Shawcross’s pacy, graphic account of the episode is careful to show that their empire began as a Mexican dream rather than a Habsburg folly. The exiled aristocrat José María Gutiérrez de Estrada traced his country’s woes back to the death of ...”

“... consulting services primarily to governments, including military and intelligence agencies. Edward Snowden, who in 2013 leaked a trove of signals intelligence data and revealed US domestic and foreign mass surveillance programmes, was a Booz Allen consultant at the NSA and before that an agent at the CIA. Booz Allen also helped the UAE set up its ...”

“... rationale for making the school syllabus more contemporary. ‘It is surely far more important,’ Edward Short, Labour’s Minister of Education, told the Association of Education Committees in 1968, ‘for young people to know the facts about Vietnam than it is to know all the details of the Wars of the Roses.’ These ...”

“... and lay down on the sofa. I did not put on the light. I lay there in the darkness. I was still young, not yet 30, but I was overcome by a fatigue that most probably comes with old age. I had cut off whatever roots I had in Poland, yet I knew that I would remain a stranger here to my last day. I tried to imagine myself in Hitler’s Dachau, or in a labour ...”

“... one too – that way Mary’s cause for jealousy would be removed. Sixty years later, talking to Edward Silsbee, Claire still put those two elements together. Pale Mary had been jealous of her ‘bright colour’, of the attention Shelley paid her and the hours he spent walking with her. After her adventure with Byron, she told Silsbee rather glibly, ‘Mrs ...”

“... Bucky’s great-aunt Margaret Fuller, the Transcendentalist and feminist.)† Though near-sighted, young Bucky loved to sail and invented a new kind of oar. His childhood hero was Robin Hood, perhaps because his father’s death had impoverished the family. When he reached Harvard, he was snubbed by his wealthier classmates, cut classes, squandered his ...”

“... by a factor of 40 between 1994 and 2002. In August 2002, a cover of Time magazine read: ‘Young and Bipolar – Once called manic depression, the disorder afflicted adults. Now it’s striking kids. Why?’ The article listed a series of ‘warning signs’ for parents: ‘poor handwriting’, ‘complains of being bored’, ‘is very ...”

“... thing, they’re not what they were: he uses a wheelchair to get about, and a smiling, shy-faced young man called Junior carries him when necessary. For another, his writing has never been fully at home in the tropics. Les Murray, a comparably prolific user of English under a hot sun, made his poem ‘The Dream of Wearing Shorts Forever’ into a love song ...”

“... the work of composition’. Initially at least, theatre wasn’t his main interest: the ambitious young provincial was determined to establish himself as a literary poet, for whom print and court patronage would be the key to success. Catering for the popular tastes of playhouse audiences was something he, like many of his playwright contemporaries, might ...”

“... of 17, and his apartheid-era fiction often dwells on the horror of being a sensitive, usually gay young man in a culture of rough sports, red meat and white supremacism. ‘We’re men here, not girls,’ an officer snarls during the narrator’s military service in The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs (1991), and the narrator, who can’t catch a ball, feels a ...”

“... or nurture – the pelican (not the first in Rego’s work) pierces its breast to feed its young – but the dynamic is sexual. The girl and bird are posed at an angle. Jane’s eyes are closed and her mouth stretched wide; she is needy, greedy, pained or ecstatic, the embrace a nightmare of assault or a dream of sustenance, perhaps salvation. Jane is ...”

“... and constitution and imposing their own candidate as head of state, the British, under General Edward Spears, forced a complete reversal. In both cases Paris suspected Britain of trying to ensure that the Union Jack would fly over the entire Levant. De Gaulle raged at the British ambassador, threatened to declare war and accused Britain of unforgivable ...”

“... She was excitedly preparing for a visit from the poet, philosopher and ‘saint in sandals’, Edward Carpenter. Born and Daniell, two of the half-dozen ‘puzzled idealists’ whose lives Sheila Rowbotham follows in Rebel Crossings, were members of the Bristol Socialist Society, a body that aspired to ‘the attainment of the higher ideals of ...”

“... off on a campaign that helpfully defined exactly how much a proposal should cost. One ad showed a young woman with her chin in her hand, big blue eyes and big shiny diamond all sparkling for the camera. The text underneath said: ‘You can’t look at Jane and tell me she’s not worth two months’ salary. I mean just look at her.’ The two months rule is ...”

“... lives and defined personalities in his. At the very outset he demonstrates this skill. There is Edward Parry, son of a cultivated and fashionable doctor in Bath – well-educated, intelligent, pious – a team-player very quick to use his charm and his connections to his own advantage, but also courageous and steadfast. There is John Ross, Parry’s ...”