“... 4); and so on. The text often blooms into a special boxed feature, such as: ‘The Joke about the Pope and the Chief Rabbi’ (this takes a whole page) or: Haggadah (Pop Quiz #1) Q. When Alex and Adam had a smoke, how much of the fun was in the rolling? A. In the book it is written: Oh, about 78 per cent. Every so often Smith will surprise us with an ...”

“... governments. Scientific discovery is evidently a dimly understood process. The new biography of Alexander Fleming by Gwyn Macfarlane sheds some unusual light on the fog. One reason for the prevailing lack of understanding is that the canons of writing in professional scientific journals – the ‘scientific literature’ – enforce a style of reporting ...”

“... Crucifixions, though not to the crude forger whose handiwork, together with its authentication by Pope Alexander VI, is proudly displayed at S. Croce in Gerusalemme at Rome. In the later Roman Empire Greeks were under increasing pressure to learn Latin; their efforts produce substandard Latin of a very different kind from that of poorly educated native ...”

“... Barberini emblem, the bee: Melissographia, an engraved broadsheet eulogising both the Barberini Pope and their own keen-eyed work, showing magnified bees (front, back, sideways and dissected head parts, surrounded by bay leaves and the Papal keys and tiara), was the first printed illustration to have been made with the aid of a microscope. Apes Diana was a ...”

“... Bruce took the throne in 1306 after a long period of wrangling over the succession. The death of Alexander III in 1286 without surviving issue and the subsequent death in 1290 of his young granddaughter, Margaret, Maid of Norway, while she was being brought to Scotland, left no clear heir and the kingdom plummeted into political turmoil. The main competitors ...”

“... must explain her hazardous use of words. She’d met Sandy, her husband, when he drove one of the Alexander buses about the town of Elgin. She happened to be the clippy on the same bus, and she would often tell me about the beauty of those single-decker vehicles (‘the Bluebird’) and the handsomeness of Sandy behind the wheel. Now she was furious all the ...”

“... It was only in 1588, when the Catholic counter-offensive was well under way and the reigning Pope was the vigorous Sixtus V – who had no lack of nerve – that saints began to be made again, starting with Diego of Alcala. The revival of saint-making was accompanied by another step in the central control of the sacred, or the right to define the ...”

“... on holy relics. It was his breach of this oath that gave William the moral high ground and caused Pope Alexander II to grant his expedition the status of a proto-Crusade, complete with appropriately blessed banner. Wood doubts the whole story of papal benediction, which has no non-Norman corroboration. But what was Harold doing across the Channel in any ...”

“... The Continental diplomacy of the 1650s was deeply affected by the rival efforts of Cromwell and Pope Alexander VII to line up their co-religionist princes. Even after 1688, as Prestwich notes, John Locke regarded the war waged by England and the Netherlands against France as a struggle for the survival of Protestantism. There is one other ...”

“... leading artists of classical antiquity, such as the painter Apelles, who was said to have painted Alexander the Great and then to have succeeded him as the lover of Campaspe, because Alexander recognised that as a painter he had a keener appreciation of her beauty than ...”

“... of Rievaulx – much of this in service of Edward’s claim to canonisation, eventually granted by Pope Alexander III in 1161. There was a strong element of self-interest in the process, designed to promote the status of Westminster Abbey, Edward’s foundation and burial place, but there is more to be said about the speed and means by which the Edward of ...”

“... 1066. Henry II, fancying a saint in the family, bought Edward’s canonisation from the schismatic Pope Alexander III in 1161 in return for some very welcome support. Henry III rebuilt the abbey in 1245 as a shrine to St Edward – and a royal mausoleum to himself, almost bankrupting the Crown in the process. The abbey’s own website calls him ...”

“... like Coats of Paisley, Scottish shipbuilders on the Clyde and ruthless Scottish traders like Alexander Matheson and William Jardine, drug-runners extraordinaire, proved conspicuous Imperial players. But there has been a recurrent tendency in history for Protestant peoples to claim they are only interested in commerce, when in fact what they have also ...”

“... Alexander Pope’s slur has loomed for centuries over the reputation of Eliza Haywood, the most prominent female author of her day. In The Dunciad, she is the prize of a pissing competition held between talentless hacks:   Who best can send on high The salient spout, far-streaming to the sky; His be yon Juno of majestic size, With cow-like udders, and with ox-like eyes ...”

“... empirically minded British tend not to go in for. ‘For forms of government let fools contest,’ Pope said, ‘whate’er is best administer’d is best.’ For the British, governing is a practical art acquired through experience. The British governing elite is proud of its reputation for political nous. The very idea of a ‘British constitution’ seems a ...”