“... history over the past three decades, has had one advantage over its neighbours. It started with a ready-made scholarly base. The technicalities of bibliography and book-production have long been studied, often with the aim of separating authentic from corrupt texts of the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. On that foundation there has been built ...”

“... plenty to say about these, too, much of it sceptical, all of it telling. He reminds us that it was Oliver Wendell Holmes who said, in a Supreme Court dissent in 1919, that ‘the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market,’ but also that Holmes spoiled the effect somewhat by holding a decidedly ...”

“... Vanzetti also reflected deeper concerns about American power and European decline. In a letter to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Harold Laski noted that ‘this case has stirred Europe as nothing since the Dreyfus case . . . the ill-feeling against Americans is . . . profound.’ Dreyfus himself made an appeal on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti, despite his ...”

“... subversive, the image is gritstone to the polished marble of the Elizabethan reputation. Isaac Oliver’s unfinished portrait of Elizabeth I (c.1592) Antiquaries and historians have wrestled with Elizabeth from the outset: first there was William Camden’s ponderous official history, then the influential courtier biographies by Robert ...”

“... or four days a week, he would attend Sunday services wearing hunting gear under his surplice, ready to take to the saddle at the end of prayer. In demonstration of good Christian thrift, when his horses died their hides were recycled to cover his armchairs.Worboys describes the ‘Canine Castle’, the dog-dealing emporium of Bill George, a ‘nobby West ...”

“... The very names taken by jazz musicians, ‘Duke’ Ellington, ‘Count’ Basie, ‘King’ Oliver, ‘Earl’ Hines might be said to ‘signify’ satirically on the structures of a social and aesthetic hierarchy anxious to favour what it nominates as ‘creative’ over something it is quick to denigrate as merely ‘imitative’. Jazz after all ...”

“... found it convenient to mouth pious concern for her distressed co-religionists abroad; she was less ready to give them armies or subsidies. Charles I, profoundly unsympathetic to international Protestant aspirations, happily ordered collections for Europe’s reformed refugees. The test for rulers came when religious sentiment conflicted with dynastic or ...”

“... was out in Nab Wood, his ‘first intimation of the numinous’ (quite near the spot where Sir Oliver Lodge photographed fairies), Aunt would be close at hand, in helmet-hat and nigger-brown costume, to make sure Michael did not fall down a rabbit-hole, while Aunt, muttering Yorkshire gibberish, searched for magical comfrey. Later, as an Army officer lost ...”

“... Harold Macmillan, Harry Crookshank, Oliver Lyttelton and Bobbety Cranborne all arrived at Eton in 1906, the first two from the affluent middle class and the other two from aristocratic families. Lyttelton went on to Cambridge and the others to Oxford, but they all served in the Grenadier Guards in 1914-18, and all four entered Churchill’s cabinet during the Second World War ...”

“... they be willing’. The Law of Freedom relates to Winstanley’s earlier writings as Milton’s Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth relates to Areopagitica and The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. Both attempt to salvage something from the wreckage by appealing for some support from those who enjoy political power – in Winstanley’s ...”

“... bus stops, and the shops grow shabbier. Here on the corner of Peckham Road and Southampton Way is Oliver Goldsmith School, which Damilola Taylor attended. Another group of policemen stands outside it. Behind the railings which line one side of the building are laid out the inevitable floral tributes to the boy – a line of cellophane bouquets stretching for ...”

“... to summarise the bewildering complexity of the Iran-Contra affair, and got gates galore. Since Oliver North and John Poindexter had communicated their fell designs through a system called the Prof computer, and since the thing hinged so much on transfers of hot and dirty money, I myself proudly came up with ‘Profligate’ which, though it won me no ...”

“... narrative form, the melodrama of circumstance.By​ the late 1960s, Loach and Garnett were ready to move on from the BBC, where the liberal regime overseen by Hugh Greene was coming to an end. Loach had already made one thoroughly unsatisfactory venture into feature film with Poor Cow (1967), co-starring Carol White and Terence Stamp, the latter fresh ...”

“... Snowden has been a subject of journalistic scrutiny for years and a hero of movies, including Oliver Stone’s somewhat misleading biopic. Snowden’s first job was as a web designer for a woman he had met in a Japanese class, a fellow anime enthusiast. They fell out after 9/11: he was all for the war on terror; she, a dove, moved to ...”

“... king, by contrast, would be a ‘lover of true piety’ and would ‘love peace, yet be ever ready for war … He must believe that as King he exists for his subjects and not for himself.’ In the right circumstances, a popular rebellion against an unfit king would be an act of virtue. James never accepted this. Instead, he believed that tyranny had to ...”