“... complained with justice that Shakespeare ‘often obscures his meaning with his words’. Dr Johnson, an expert fault-finder, found many faults, without doubting the poet’s powers. Indeed the necessary warnings were first expressed by Shakespeare’s friend and rival Ben Jonson, who loved the man ‘this side idolatry’ – certainly he ‘wanted ...”

“... and more or less equal numbers of fashion shots and celebrity portraits (do we really need Boris Johnson?). But the catalogue, the real star of the show, gives a thorough account of the magazine’s history. Condé Nast, who had bought the US version in 1909, wasn’t taking any risks by launching a British edition: American Vogue was the second most popular ...”

“... with Temple’s friends and admirers in high places, including the king, who according to Samuel Johnson is supposed to have taught the young secretary how to eat asparagus in the ‘Dutch’ fashion (whatever that may have been). He started writing poetry – tricky Pindaric odes in praise of statesmen he admired, through which he discovered that he ...”

“... were not actually born to succeed. King George V was 27 before the death of his elder brother, the Duke of Clarence, put him directly in line to the throne. King George VI was 41 when Edward VIII unexpectedly abdicated. And Queen Elizabeth II spent her first decade with no inkling that she might one day be called upon to reign. Taken together, these examples ...”

“... calls for correction, and, though quite firm in their treatment of other scholars, they avoid what Johnson called ‘the acrimony of a scholiast’ and generally preserve a civil tone. ‘No edition of Shakespeare can or should be definitive ... Our own edition ... is inevitably not only fallible but arbitrary.’ Gary Taylor’s General Introduction carefully ...”

“... gentlemen’, and then Harvard. At Harvard, Francis, who was now known as either ‘Fuzzy’ or ‘Duke’, proceeded fairly steadily through the world of exclusivity, joining, for example, the élite Porcellian Club. Yes, it was banking next: Lazard Frères, in London. But then things changed. In poor health, ‘Fuzzy’ collapsed at work, and was invalided ...”

“... the Princeton campus’s splendid trees and hideous buildings, like This Side of Paradise and The Duke of Deception, it forms part of the hazy, glowing nimbus of traditions and practices that renders four years in central New Jersey worth the formidable current price of some $140,000. In the 16th century, mastery of formal Latin was the price of entrance to ...”

“... he died, at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar. Hughes had been appointed by Lyndon Johnson to lead the American delegation, which included Duke Ellington and the gospel singer Marion Williams, an indication of the way he was now viewed in Washington, and his speech built to what must have been one of his ...”

“... primitive vestiges of the British world: his maternal grandfather had been a land agent for the duke of Sutherland, who ‘improved’ the Highlands by forcing out its uneconomic crofters. When rambling in Glen Urquhart, Lang saw ‘smoke hanging in the wet air’ above one of the last cottages to be burned down in an eviction.The detection of ‘savages ...”

“... numbers, and the quest for the sublime not infrequently toppled into the ridiculous.The 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos – famous for his size, and for taking all the pens and stationery with him when he left the Board of Trade in 1807 – was lugged up Vesuvius in a sedan chair by relays of guides, one of whom, Salvatore Madonna, was still ...”

“... and ‘barbarous’. Garrick was still arousing gasps of awe as the prince, and Samuel Johnson loved the play. But neoclassical principles generally demand clear form and order, and a self-evident morality, and these are choices that Hamlet has always been able to frustrate or violate. This restricted sense of the civilised re-emerged last century ...”

“... unhappily) celibate. As a result, many of the most vigorous and creative intellects – Samuel Johnson, Edward Gibbon and Newton himself after the Principia was published – left the universities for London in search of patronage, inspiration, new contacts and the throb of life. It was London indisputably, the centre of ...”

“... so in the final text from which the poet dropped those conservative martyrs Richard III and the Duke of Wellington. Paulin has described Geoffrey Hill as being ‘parasitic’ on Eliot’s imagination, but has always claimed to like the sonnet ‘Idylls of the King’ which provoked all the London Review controversy, and he reprints it here. It is ...”

“... Newington farm for civet cats has entered literary mythology – but without lasting success. As Johnson was to say of Richard Savage, another denizen of Grub Street, ‘he was therefore obliged to seek some other means of support; and, having no profession, became by necessity an author.’ The accession of the Roman Catholic James II in 1685, and his ...”

“... speaker. It won’t happen, of course, and in this morning’s Guardian the name of the Duke of Edinburgh is put forward to spearhead the campaign. It’s only in the middle of the afternoon that I remember the date.9 April. I’m waiting at the lights by St Mark’s Church when a family – grandfather, son and grandson – cross. The grandfather ...”