“... usually at the instigation of two maverick MPs elected in 1831 and 1832 respectively: Henry Hunt and William Cobbett. Pearce acknowledges both respectfully, but for the most part his book wallows in the mud of the debates between Whig and Tory. He manages somehow to convert most of the Whig ministers into memorable characters, much larger than ...”

“... a ‘makar’. A century later in his how-to-be-a-king book, the Basilikon Doron, the versifying James VI of Scotland claimed that he had ‘not spared to play the bairde against all the estaitis of my kingdome’. When James boarded the English throne in 1603, his Scots had to be translated for English readers to whom the ...”

“... is more direct: ‘Erected to the memory of the heroes … Stephen Decatur Parish, James West Hadnot, Sidney Harris, who fell in the Colfax Riot fighting for White Supremacy, April 13, 1873.’ When EJI arrived in Montgomery there were more than fifty memorials of one sort or another to the glories of the Confederacy. They included a gold star ...”

“... job: ‘Jackson was married first in 1956 to Sheila Mannion. She was the daughter of John Henry Mannion, unskilled employee of the Gas Board.’ It does seem a bit rough on John Henry that he should for ever be remembered as ‘unskilled’. We learn of John le Mesurier’s three wives that they were daughters ...”

“... of republicanism, and to move beyond them by vindicating in addition Thomas May, the flamboyant Henry Marten, the remorseless George Wither and the versatile journalist Marchamont Nedham. All of these have been eclipsed in the recent preoccupation with James Harrington, the author of Oceana (1656), and his followers. The ...”

“... the death of either man. The coincidence is made more striking by the similarities between George Henry Lewes and John Forster. They were two of the stars of Victorian literary journalism: much in demand as editors, and absolutely reliable in their capacity to produce essays and reviews of first-rate quality on a huge range of topics at an intimidating ...”

“... could not – that Pietro had not forgotten their modest climb and survey a few years earlier. Henry Wotton, James I’s ambassador to Venice, bought Bernardo’s copies of Alberti’s works on painting and architecture, and brought them back to England, seeing them as key texts for the transformation of English ...”

“... to register the world around him. His friend John le Gay Brereton could see the importance of Henry Lawson. Brennan couldn’t. He had no interest in the bush, the Labour movement or Australian nationalism. In the Australian Nineties, a period which self-consciously but justifiably felt itself to be alive with the possibility of a new national ...”

“... This, too, ranks high among poems of the war. On its own it would be enough to class Johnston with Henry Reed, Bernard Spencer, F.T. Prince and Norman Cameron. It is a high-quality example of what can by now be seen to be a particular school of Virgilian plangency, the poetry of the broken-hearted fields. But it is probably not one of Johnston’s best ...”

“... the military (he became a pacifist), the aristocracy (he followed the American writer Henry George in believing in common ownership of land) and the Orthodox Church (which excommunicated him) – increased his stature in revolutionary times, as did the government’s hostility towards him and the fact that he was sufficiently engaged in reality to ...”

“... The Wiki authors seem here to be thinking of, among others, Henry Darger, the obsessive, reclusive, quasi-paedophilic Chicago hospital janitor and bona fide outsider-genius, who died in 1973, leaving behind hundreds of extraordinary scrolls of artwork, exquisitely painted and collaged, depicting an apocalyptic ...”

“... Soane was born in 1753, the son of a Berkshire bricklayer. At 15 he met a London architect, James Peacock, who was closely associated with George Dance, architect to the City of London. Dance gave Soane a place in his household. After three or four years he left Dance for Henry Holland, from whom he learned more of ...”

“... business as a popular novelist with grotesquely inappropriate equipment (Flaubert, Maupassant, James) and never really mastered the themes and the manner of popular romance. Above all, he chose to write English, which was not even his second language. Of course all these choices contributed to Conrad’s eventual triumph, though the last and possibly the ...”

“... It was not necessary to be an aristocrat to enter this game. Hembry introduces us to Dr Henry Jephson, whose ‘professional income was said to be £20,000, the largest in the world’. He not only brought fame to Leamington’s waters, but toiled mightily in banking, railways, gas, beer, insurance and farming; when his health failed at fifty he ...”

“... pocket-slim volumes of the Buildings of England, take years to complete each hefty replacement. James Bettley, responsible for the new Essex volume, did not even have to bother with Ilford, Romford, Leyton and Walthamstow. With the setting up of the GLC and the new administrative boundaries of 1965, Essex, as the blurb to the Shell Guide quaintly puts ...”