“... Wagner was a good conversationalist, he retorted: ‘Do you imagine, sir, that the conversation of Mount Etna is pleasant?’ Was this oracular volcano the same man whom German readers knew for his love of pranks, dogs, soft furnishings and other people’s money? In 1877, the Neue Freie Presse got the scoop of publishing Wagner’s letters to his costumier ...”

“... discussions of geology and theories of the sublime, we get occasional glimpses of the Bourbon king Ferdinand IV fleeing to Sicily hotly pursued by Napoleon’s brother-in-law Joachim Murat, who takes the throne until he in turn is forced to flee. Brewer’s is a thematic rather than a chronological account, but even broad themes need to be understood ...”

“... Latin by comparing them with those of his close contemporary Lorenzo Valla, who in his Life of Ferdinand of Aragon also found himself compelled to use modern terms for such things as the compass, the clock and the cannon. He could have shed another kind of light on Alberti’s experiments with Italian by comparing them with those of his friend and ...”

“... further disruption. Across the world, democracy was in retreat. Like Gandhi, Park Chung Hee and Ferdinand Marcos were both elected but became despots, staging coups and ruling by decree from 1972. Burma adopted presidential rule in 1974, Bangladesh followed in 1975, Sri Lanka in 1978; Pakistan’s 1973 constitution stipulated a highly presidential prime ...”

“... waters there is a fine cascade from one to the other, a thatch’d house, a round pavilion on a mount, [and] Shake Spear’s house, in which is a small statue of him, and his works in a glass case; and in all the houses and seats are books in hanging glass cases. Kirk established that ‘Shake Spear’s house’ – where presumably the countess and fellow ...”

“... the same threat. No one would stage a rebellion in her favour while there were male Yorkists to mount a challenge. Her early years are obscure. Her mother, the great heiress Isabel Neville, died in 1476 after giving birth to her fourth child; this last baby, like Isabel’s first child, did not live. Margaret would have been too young to remember her ...”