“... For some at least, the sense of religious mission was certainly enhanced by the 1496 Bull of Pope Alexander (‘Borgia’) VI, which legitimised Castilian conquests by charging the conquerors with the work of Christianising the subjected pagans. The consequence was that, unlike anywhere else in the creole world, ecclesiastics (both religious and ...”

“... a subversive weapon. Sometimes Newton’s pleasure seems merely ‘schoolboyish’ – David Alexander’s word – because what Crowninshield would later call the ‘grossness and somewhat fat overstatement’ overwhelm any political point. Not so, however, when Newton shows Napoleon Establishing French Quarters in Italy by having the ...”

“... is Greek 4000 years’. The emphasis of this propaganda is very much on Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great: essentially on the question of who got to Macedonia first, the Greeks or the Slavs. Very little is said about much more recent events which go a long way towards explaining Greek attitudes, even if they do not excuse the bullying stance ...”

“... Painters was ‘deliberately designed to cause the greatest possible antagonism’, as John Pope-Hennessey put it (the second volume, published in 1891, the year of Morelli’s death, is more collegial). Morelli’s nemesis, Wilhelm von Bode, the director of the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, claimed it displayed a ‘most dangerous ...”

“... century into the theory of taste and has ever since been in the ascendant, while the latter (what Alexander Baumgarten called ‘the science of aesthetics’) has suffered mixed fortunes. While taste has provided the focus for most theoretical speculation on aesthetics, sensory cognition has either been diverted into some of the weaker efforts of ...”

“... had anything to do with Poland regaining independence: it was all due to Solidarity and the pope. (My neighbour, who had signed the cheques for the CIA’s Polish operations at the time, is unimpressed.) Walesa has the air of a Polish John Prescott, only bigger. He has not carried the last 25 years as well as the other Poles. What is even stranger, I ...”

“... impressive book, Shakespeare Restored, challenging what he saw as the errors and complacencies of Alexander Pope’s 1725 edition of the works, and offering many examples of his own editorial skills, particularly in the elucidation of difficult or corrupt passages. So his exalted claims for the provenance of Double Falsehood seemed to carry some ...”

“... the towering achievement of his minister Thomas Cromwell, whose idea it was to declare UDI on the pope, and, in effect, the rest of Europe. Not all of those who came next, including his own pupils, agreed with Elton. Some very publicly disagreed, and Cromwell was in danger of being sealed back into the sarcophagus which had contained his remains for five ...”

“... overwhelming odds to achieve the fulfilment of the ideals he believed in. The great Russian exile, Alexander Herzen, credited him with ‘an infinity of persistence and strength of will’: ‘Such men do not give in, do not yield; the worse things go with them, the higher they hold the flag ... In this inflexible steadfastness, in this faith which goes ...”

“... broke, in 1441, that an Ethiopian delegation was to attend that year’s Council of Florence. The Pope was reportedly much moved, even though the delegation turned out to consist of no more than two monks, sent not by any Ethiopian monarch but by their local community in Jerusalem. Interest in Ethiopia was, however, by then well and truly aroused – and ...”

“... after all, had actually begun as a science: in the work of the 18th-century philosopher Alexander Baumgarten, it represented a systematic investigation into human perception and sensation. The work of art could be seen as the paradigm of a new kind of rationality, one in which the sensory and the spiritual, the individual and the universal, were ...”

“... reputations. Joseph, the pious Bavarian, who had grown up to become Cardinal Ratzinger and then Pope Benedict XVI, appalled the Muslim world and many liberal Catholics by quoting a Byzantine emperor’s insults to the Prophet Muhammad. The Danzig lad, who had become Germany’s best-known writer and a Nobel Prize winner, the scourge of those who kept quiet ...”

“... perineal secretions for the manufacture of perfume. It is not quite the milieu of Fielding or Pope. It was rumoured that he kept a set of ropes and ladders handy should the debt collector come to call. His creditors hounded him, and he was committed to Fleet Prison as a bankrupt. On his release he decided that words were a more lucrative commodity than ...”

“... it could be explained by reference to his known medical condition. That he had taken up the Alexander technique, accounting for his distinctive posture, was not publicised until later. That he wore flat heels might have been noted by a quizzical eye. That he was a devotee of knitting was not a foible widely reported at that time. That Cripps did any of ...”

“... cropped up in British courts in medieval times; that Madame Tussaud was born Marie Grosholtz; that Pope Urban VIII changed the horseflies on his family coat of arms to bees; that mead doesn’t taste very nice; that Alexander the Great may have been mummified in honey, but then again he may not; that honey from bees which ...”