“... at Venice, that it was at Bologna; but at Bologna the fact was denied, and I was referred to Florence; from Florence to Rome, and from Rome I was sent to Naples. The operation most certainly is against the law in all these places, as well as against nature; and all the Italians are so much ashamed of it, that in every ...”

“... to such other collectors as William Lever, William Burrell or Pitt Rivers, Wellcome was the king of ragpickers. ‘Pawn shops, blacksmith shops and rag & bone dealers are amongst the most likely to yield results,’ he told Thompson. ‘The roughest places are often the best – but they require patience. Priests can do much for you.’ He hoarded ...”

“... the climax of that work he finally asks whether the people of England have the right to put their king on trial for his life. He responds that, unless they possess this right, they cannot be said to have the independent power to govern themselves according to their will. But if they lack that power, then they are not free persons living in a free nation, but ...”

“... Wilson, who wanted tighter British control. She was thus instrumental not only in establishing King Feisal’s Iraq, but indirectly Saddam Hussein’s, a state with a predominantly secular outlook ruled by the Sunni Arab minority, now fighting for its life against the combined forces of Persian nationalism and Shia revanchism. She is perhaps the only ...”

“... consternation, Sidney ignored this order, crossing the Alps into Italy, visiting Genoa and Florence in direct contravention of Languet’s advice, and living for some months in Venice. Languet wrote to him in alarm, warning of the dangers of Rome, with its popish snares and delusions: ‘For free minds nothing is more pernicious than those arts which ...”

“... the short straw. But when there were floods on the Arno several years ago, we already knew where Florence was on the map; and we knew for quite independent reasons, which then enhanced our concern, not only for any randomly unfortunate victims but also for the threat to uniquely significant parts of what we prize as our cultural heritage. A more complicated ...”

“... in clogs and woollen skirt’ who took up arms and walked out fearlessly to confront her king and restore him to his throne. One of the many verses goes: Fiers enfants de la Lorraine Des montagnes à la plaine, Sur nous, plane ombre sereine, Jeanne d’Arc, vierge souveraine! Marjorie Annan Bryce in a Suffragette procession to mark George V’s ...”

“... a brilliant collection of short (and sometimes not so short) fictions, which remains, in its King Penguin edition, the most beautifully designed of his many beautifully designed books; and 1982, Janine, apparently Gray’s favourite among his own novels, and mine too. Janine is intimate rather than epic: it is written as an interior monologue, and this ...”

“... The Discourses, a man of affairs trying to make something happen, but the author of The History of Florence and of those strange letters: the man who could write ‘I love my native city more than my own soul,’ who corresponded with the ancients so vividly one can imagine him waiting patiently, day by day, for their replies. Thus Debord’s story is a story ...”

“... away to sea – prompted, one poem suggests, by a baleful look shot by the poet from her pram – Florence Margaret Smith lived in her Palmers Green house; from her mid-twenties, nicknamed Stevie after the jockey Steve Donoghue, she lived there alone with her aunt, producing three novels and a torrent of poems and articles, and working as a secretary at ...”

“... in her, poor thing, and not wilfulness ... If once I get you here again’ – he is addressing Florence Dugdale – ‘won’t I clutch you tight?’ Six weeks later he told her, from Boscastle: the visit to this neighbourhood has been a very painful one to me, & I have said a dozen times I wish I had not come. What possessed me to do it! I went to St ...”

“... by André Gide in 1895, ‘greedily eating little vanilla ice creams’ at the Caffè Gambrinus in Florence. Gide reports: ‘He speaks with a clear voice, rather icy but soft and wheedling. His glance is quite cold: perhaps he is cruel, or perhaps it is his refined sensuality that makes him seem so to me. On his head he wears a plain black bowler ...”

“... C.R.W. Nevinson fancied the life of a bohemian and attention-grabber. His idol was Augustus John, king of the Café Royal, and, in 1908, he decided to go to the Slade, as John had done. There he knocked around with Stanley Spencer, Mark Gertler and Edward Wadsworth in the Slade Coster Gang. They went to music halls, held parties with naked dancing girls and ...”

“... massive. She learnt the art of public speaking, as well as the simple, accessible language of the King James Bible. Like so many other British politicians over the centuries, she would draw on this source regularly in her speeches, quoting verses, telling homely parables, and infusing everything she said with a fire and earnestness borrowed from the ...”

“... As anyone who has directed a remake of King Kong knows, revisiting classics is a perilous business. However much you claim to stand on the shoulders of the mighty beast, you still risk ending up, like Fay Wray, squeezed in its paw. A.M. Gibbs spends most of the introduction to Bernard Shaw: A Life justifying his decision to return to a very well-ploughed furrow ...”