“... What is history for? What do we want it to do? In 1731, an obscure Kentish schoolmaster named Richard Spencer offered some answers. Properly to ascertain his position in geographical space, he reasoned, required not a single map, but access to a global atlas, one that would allow him to ‘see what London and the adjacent parts are in the kingdom; what the kingdom is in Europe, and what Europe is in the universe ...”

“... When Richard Rorty died last year, the New York Times called him ‘one of the world’s most influential contemporary thinkers’. Few philosophers would accept this assessment. Rorty was widely read and admired by many, he had a good nose for a controversy and was impressive in oral debate. But his influence on philosophy has, so far, been minimal: Rorty’s unconvincing attempts to show that traditional philosophy has had its day have largely been ignored by philosophers ...”

“... and pendulums by celestial law and geometrical order. However surprising it may seem, even the English title, ‘The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy’, was, according to Newton, designed to help the book sell. Long before scientific popularisation became the common salvation of hard-pressed publishers, Newtonianism spawned a strenuous ...”

“... for state uniformity – still appears to influence Labour Party policy. Their tortuous history of English local government, published in 1906, is full of complaints about local autonomy. ‘It does not seem to have occurred to the framers or supporters of the Municipal Corporation Act of 1835,’ they wrote, ‘to make the slightest beginning of any ...”

“... to share kick-backs from the illegal sale of goods from prize ships. In his lifetime he saw the English state transformed from monarchy to Commonwealth and back again, and the English Church sway from extreme Puritanism to near Catholicism. He seemed always to be in the right place at the right time: he was there for the ...”

“... of morality, and often features vivid characterisations of the disreputable side of 18th cent. English life.’ But the quotations cited in support of this definition seem to tell a different story. They include a letter of 1829 by Charles Lamb, in which he speaks of ‘true broad Hogarthian fun’, and an essay by Carlyle of 1837: ‘There is nothing more ...”

“... will have to become multilingual. Membership of the EU has been an easy ride in the sense that English is its main language of business and exchange. You can get by with English in most European cities. But monolingual English will be a problem if people want to interact more ...”

“... landscape of bleak buildings and biting winds. More shocking still was the existence of a white English peasantry; the ‘arrivants’ (to borrow Kamau Brathwaite’s term) didn’t know that there would be slums in England, or that the slums would be where they had to live. Johnson was enrolled in Tulse Hill School, a large comprehensive for boys. Despite ...”

“... Here, and elsewhere, the Anglophone reader may be reminded of the importance of this theme in English literature, as in Donne’s ‘The Good-Morrow’ (‘My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears’) or Shakespeare’s proto-structuralist joke about infidelity in The Merchant of Venice, when Bassanio, swearing his love to Portia, says, ‘I swear to ...”

“... of Americans and himself a US citizen until his 39th year – being mistaken for the cousin of an English country squire. At times, often with a gleam of self-mockery, he confessed to social snobbery, indeed rather relished it: ‘One does feel a Swell leaving by sleeping car & walking up and down the station platform in a dinner jacket.’ This and other ...”

“... with Metaphysical poetry a lowness of esteem which now seems puzzling. As the Cyclopaedia of English Literature explained in 1844, Marvel ‘is better known as a prose writer than a poet, and is still more celebrated as a patriotic member of parliament’. Benson rejected those priorities. He saw Marvell’s political involvement as a cause not for pride ...”

“... barefoot or otherwise. I then went to see K. B. McFarlane. My special subject in Schools was Richard II so I had been to McFarlane’s lectures on the Lollard Knights; I also had a copy of some notes on his 1953 Ford Lectures that was passed down from year to year in Exeter. I knew of his austere reputation and of his reluctance to publish from David ...”

“... Schurman began her Latin tract on Women’s Aptitude for Knowledge and Higher Learning (or, as the English translation subtitled it ‘Whether a Maid may be a Scholar?’) of 1641 by acknowledging that ‘few are fortunate to have parents who either want or are able to educate them themselves.’ On his deathbed, Van Schurman’s father, her first ...”

“... and Memoirs – had covers easily recognisable as ‘SF art’. The jackets were designed by Richard Powers, whose unmistakable paintings were usually found on Ballantine mass-market paperbacks by Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, Clifford Simak and others. Powers’s designs screamed of the ‘paraliterary’, of druggy, trippy, sci-fi – just the boy’s ...”

“... of ‘crimes against taste’. David Lodge made him a twee subject of nostalgic research for the English hero of Small World, Philip Swallow, hopelessly outgunned by the vulgar but irresistible American, Morris Zapp. Lodge had got his significant detail wrong – Swallow should be a scholar of Charles Lamb (the ‘gentle-hearted’) – but the broad ...”