“... apart in age and came from different worlds. Burke was born in Dublin in 1729, the second son of Richard, a Protestant lawyer of ‘fretful temper’, and Mary, daughter of a Catholic family from County Cork. Richard Burke was a harsh and unforgiving father, and rumours about cradle Catholicism dogged Edmund throughout his ...”

“... or monetary co-operation. In a cabinet meeting in February 1966 Wilson again denied the link, and Richard Crossman, the minister of housing, recorded in his diary that Wilson ‘repeated time after time that the Americans had never made any connection between the financial support they gave us and our support for them in Vietnam.’ The evidence confirms that ...”

“... that when Sir Henry Wyatt, father of the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt, was imprisoned in the Tower by Richard III he was fed by a cat which brought him a dead pigeon. In Wolf Hall this piece of family mythology becomes a tale that Sir Henry, on the edge of retirement, relates himself, with a rheumy twinkle of unreliability in his eye. A factually implausible ...”

“... with atheism, libertinism and violent revolution. Openly atheistic tracts by such agitators as Richard Carlile were sold under the counter and were often written from prison. As Secord observes, such works ‘had long been available to the wealthy and discreet, and were sold in much the same way (and sometimes through the same channels) as ...”

“... than the sun’s shafts seem to promise. What if the guide has lost his touch, can no longer read the entrails? Speer’s detachment and poised ambiguity were not entirely affectations. He was a provincial snob who regarded himself, with cause, as socially superior to Hitler, let alone such freakish botches of Aryan manhood as Himmler, Göring, Ley and ...”

“... Cambridge for stealing library books; her stepmother was violent and tyrannical; her half-brother Richard was shipped off to India for some unnamed crime; her brother-in-law Molesworth Phillips was a bullying and unfaithful husband; her elder brother James had an incestuous relationship with his half-sister. It sounds like a Mrs Radcliffe family in a castle ...”

“... campaign for the mayoralty, which the long-serving Tom Bradley is about to relinquish. Businessman Richard Riordan, one of 24 candidates to succeed him, seems to be promising that all the unpleasantness of South Central will somehow be removed. He puts it less plainly even than this, however: his paid-for advertising slots include a sound-bite in which a ...”

“... have the bright idea of taking that pompous phrase literally and pretending that he and his foil, Richard Murdoch, were living in a flat at the top of Broadcasting House. For some reason this fancy captivated the nation, and from it developed a wonderful gallimaufry of imaginary characters – Lewis the Goat, Mrs Bagwash, her daughter Nausea. It established ...”

“... squad. Like many US authors, Beschloss assumes that his readers have a week of free time to read a book, which must account for the large numbers of partially read volumes on American shelves. But while the book is very long, over seven hundred pages before the notes start, the subject merits exhaustive treatment and ...”

“... we look at it with comparative indifference. I will venture to say, that no one but a pedant ever read his own works regularly through. They are not his – they are become mere words, waste-paper, and have none of the glow, the creative enthusiasm, the vehemence, and natural spirit with which he wrote them.’ Though it lacks Hazlitt’s momentum and ...”

“... Goering had created to co-opt potential opponents. In November, he was made vice-president (to Richard Strauss’s president) of the newly created Reichsmusikkammer (Goebbels’s baby), to which henceforth all musicians wishing to work professionally had to belong. In January 1934, he signed a contract as director of the Berlin State Opera. But by the end ...”

“... and park of circa 1700 in which we overhear a scene from Pamela, and then becomes a painting by Richard Wilson with figures from Peregrine Pickle. Thereafter we are led through Gainsborough’s Forest with a guest appearance by Sterne, Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, a John Martin and a Turner, with snatches of poems by Wordsworth and ...”

“... of easy, unconventional correctness, the quality she recognised admiringly as ‘breeding’. ‘I read The Winter’s Tale and wept for joy. Breed coming out in Perdita the moment she’s threatened.’ Or, nearer home: ‘Janet ... came in the morning, having done some shopping for us in D[orchester] – looking, in an old weatherproof jacket, a ...”

“... have been perfectly obvious to any English person during the centuries for which the work has been read. In any case, the present exhaustive survey by Peter Field has surely put paid to the Matthew thesis, the Kittredge denial and the Lewis exculpation all together: it is no longer possible to say, in chorus or separately, ‘it wasn’t him, it never ...”

“... high-toned rather than specific. The acceptance speech is an affirmation, not a programme. I have read every Democratic and Republican acceptance speech from those of Truman and Dewey in 1948 to those of Carter and Reagan in 1980, as well as those of some of their illustrious predecessors. What strikes me is the extent to which they represent a canon ...”