“... Alexander Cohen, Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, Sir John Gielgud, Hugh Griffiths, Joseph Losey, James Mason, Vincente Minnelli, Mike Nichols, Rachel Roberts, Daphne Rye, Jean Simmons, and three of his wives, Sybil Christopher, Elizabeth Taylor and Susan Hunt. I particularly enjoyed the parenthesis Mr Ferris appended to Hugh Griffith’s name in the list of ...”

“... a companion drive a truck at great speed down a narrowing alley. The vehicle is too tall for the James Bond ruse of tilting it at an angle. It stays level and finally gets stuck between the walls. The two men leap out and climb onto two waiting motorcycles. It was all planned. This is where the mind comes back, of course, and we might think the attraction of ...”

“... fall). It did no harm to Magdalen that Wolsey, who was one of its fellows, himself became Henry VIII’s chancellor. When I was senior bursar of the college in the early 1980s I had the pleasure of presiding over the topping out ceremony when we completed the restoration of Magdalen’s Great Tower, sharing that distinction only with Wolsey, my ...”

“... to have its volume revised and expanded by Yale.* The mid-18th-century country house designed by James Paine is described as ‘utilitarian’ but ‘counterbalanced with magnificent and ornate interiors’. It belonged to the Lamb family, forebears of Queen Victoria’s first prime minister, Lord Melbourne and was bought in the 1920s by a Liverpool ...”

“... for the would-be popular biographer is evident in his entry in the Concise DNB: Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-1895), man of science; studied at Charing Cross Hospital; announced, 1845, discovery of the layer of cells in root sheath of hair which now bears his name; MB London, 1845; made assistant surgeon on HMS Rattlesnake 1846-50, investigations relating to ...”

“... heroes of Empire were never the great proconsuls, but young men representatively on the loose – James Brooke of Sarawak, John and Henry Lawrence of the Punjab, Charles Gordon, Lawrence of Arabia, William Sleeman who destroyed Thuggee, Frederick Lugard who conquered Northern Nigeria. If such men became proconsuls it often ...”

“... king, moves to the centre of the story. If Saul is the model for Macbeth, David is the model for Henry V. The contrast between the two is cruelly conveyed in the little taunt which the women, prime movers throughout the story, start to sing in 1 Samuel 18: ‘Saul has struck down his thousands/and David his tens of thousands!’ This is Alter’s translation ...”

“... had learnt in the 13th century. The first European ruler to react to this change of location was Henry IV, who in 1400 wrote a letter to the ‘King of Abyssinia, Prester John’. The fascination with Ethiopia did not stop there, for news broke, in 1441, that an Ethiopian delegation was to attend that year’s Council of Florence. The Pope was reportedly ...”

“... ever produced. Infinitely more profound and productive than his nearest 18th-century equivalent, Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, he was also far more prominent in national politics over a much longer span than John Milton or the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury in the 17th century, J.S. Mill in the 19th century, and Bertrand Russell this century. Nominated MP ...”

“... popularisation of the subject of social history has recently come back into favour; and earlier, Henry Sumner Maine and F.W. Maitland made historical jurisprudence reputable subjects. More elusive is the question that lurks behind the immediate human interest of the lives of the Apostles. Given that most societies recruit élites for a variety of purposes ...”

“... rather rare comments on Shakespeare’s language. He might say of a particular passage, like Henry V’s soliloquy about the cares of kingship, that it is ‘terribly bad poetry’, but he doesn’t say anything more, except that this ‘is just as it should be’. He would read aloud long passages and pass on without recorded comment. The effect is a ...”

“... The​ official justification for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was set out by Henry Stimson, the former US secretary of war, in the February 1947 issue of Harper’s. There had been ‘no other choice’, he said. Had the bombs not been dropped, a bloody invasion of Japan would have been inevitable, and might have ‘cost over a million casualties to the American forces alone ...”

“... Despite his interest in ‘rightin’ people’s wrongs’, he has been impressed by his friend Henry’s account of ‘the Nasties’ in Germany:‘They can’t be called nasties,’ said William. ‘No one would call themselves a name like that. That mus’ be what people call them that don’t like them.’‘No, it’s their real name,’ persisted ...”

“... but the victorious soldiers had been roused. Generals such as Oliver Cromwell and his son-in-law Henry Ireton combined a Bible-grounded vengeance against Charles as a ‘man of blood’ with the more practical realisation that a stricken king would always try to win back power. Negotiations, they thought, had to stop. Claiming necessity and the ‘safety of ...”

“... of automata in this theology can be seen in the post-Reformation treatment of the Rood of Grace. Henry VIII banned automata from England’s churches as part of the creation of the Anglican Church, and the Rood was taken from Boxley Abbey in 1538 at the time of the monastery’s dissolution. The removal was carried out by Geoffrey Chamber, an agent of Thomas ...”