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“... table and big game hunting. One such house was the staggering, swaggering baroque of Bryanston for Lord Portman; another was the castellated, constipated confection of Skibo for Andrew Carnegie; and a third was the ebullient, flamboyant Renaissance of Sennowe Park for Thomas Cook’s grandson. These houses were for social advancement, self-indulgence and ...”

“... the press or publicity. He ran 10 Downing Street in sedentary, Asquithian style when the spirit of Lord George was urgently required. Among those who generally took a sceptical view of Attlee was Hugh Dalton. A bully, intriguer and relentless self-publicist, Dalton had all the qualities Attlee lacked. Fame and notoriety buzzed around his head, and his claims ...”

“... the divine Jade from the very brink of nuptiality while her husband-to-have-been, the gutless Lord Mark Rand, gnashes his titled English gums helplessly. Given his class and country, the chances of Lord Mark not being scheming, weak, pale and under-equipped are nil. Lucky, Married Men, Sinners, Chances, The ...”

“... someone who admired Gilbert Elliot of Minto and was annoyed by Robert Dundas of Arniston, second Lord President. Quite a lot of Scottish writers on politics might fulfil these requirements. The militia was attractive to upper-class society because of the opportunities it gave for the exertion of patronage, to the intellectuals because it reaffirmed ...”

“... ancient civilisation. The Dilettanti travelled to Italy and Greece, drawing, measuring, reporting home, and came back laden with spoils for their private collections. Compared with their modern counterparts, scholars funded by Mellon, Ford, Guggenheim and the British Academy, the Dilettanti had a striking characteristic: they were not so much specialists as ...”

“... that Van Dyck had made her face too fat. She wrote to Sir Ralph Verney: ‘I am glad you have got home my picture, but I doubt he hath neither made it leaner nor fairer, but rich in jewels I am sure, but It is no great matter for another age to think me richer than I was.’ We need to be careful in deciding what meanings the clothes in his paintings may ...”

“... were also obstructing legitimate trade – for example, with Elisha Peck’s United States. On the home front his policies were equally instinctive. He was a reactionary of the first order. His first speech in the House of Commons in 1796 had clearly set out his agenda: to ‘save’ the country ‘from the delusions of popular opinion’, and from the ...”

“... and Israel than God’s bald declaration of holy ground and the violating human shoe. Still, the Lord kept his part of the bargain not only by leading them out of Egypt, but by looking after their feet: ‘And I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and thy shoe is not waxen old upon thy foot.’ Even Lobbs of ...”

“... on who they are speaking to – from mockney when talking to clients in the cell to Little Lord Fauntleroy’s posher cousin when addressing the judge. We learn also about Carman’s pressurised working arrangements: how he would return from a heavy drinking session to begin preparing for an important cross-examination, or even call in at his house to ...”

“... the English Sprachraum it was perhaps never all that high in the first place – because of ‘The Lord Chandos Letter’, the tiny but freakishly important story of 1902, the wonderful-but-never-seen play, Der Schwierige, a swansong of passivity in the drawing-room; and, above all, the opera libretti he wrote for Richard Strauss: Elektra, Der ...”

“... scarlet macaw. According to another it is a wildcat, although I’m sure it is a German Shepherd. Lord Asriel, the heroine Lyra’s father and the liberating but power-hungry Satan of Pullman’s universe, has a terrifying snow leopard daemon called Stelmaria whose remoteness and violence evokes the excitement of revolutionary power. Mrs Coulter, Lyra’s ...”

“... military defeat. So what caused the collapses? Incompetent bureaucrats sent out from Rome, or ‘Home’, not speaking a word of the language of the people they affected to rule, was his answer, and Duggan’s stepfather was Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, so perhaps he knew what he was talking about. Arthur and Badon creep ...”

“... serving Prime Minister, and occupied the post for a longer continuous period than anyone since Lord Liverpool in the early 19th century. As a result, the volume of official paperwork impinging on her career is enormous, and much of it is still under wraps. The first and only woman to lead the Conservative Party, and the first non-royal female ever to lead ...”

“... or more candidly offered as offcuts of authorial wisdom. Either way, it doesn’t strike home with much effect because – although often unexceptionable – it lacks intellectual force and doesn’t seem hard-won. Blake is meant to be a significant presence in A Bottle in the Smoke, both as a poet and as the subject of Gilchrist’s Life, and his ...”

“... in the wrong kind of certainties. British history – declining abroad and under pressure at home – is no exception. How useful then to be reminded by these books that the study of history, like humanity itself, is chiefly valuable for its diversity. The Blackwell Dictionary of Historians edited by John Cannon is a splendid work which, even in these ...”