“... was remarkably resilient. He lived to be eighty, having served four monarchs (Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, Elizabeth I) and spent 43 years as a member of the Chapel Royal. Unfortunately for historians, his music and his longevity are all we have to go on, since Tallis left almost nothing about himself. Unlike William Byrd and John Sheppard, he wrote ...”

“... panoramas, particularly when covering distant wars. The Foreign Office, steered by its librarian Edward Hertslet, began to see more importance in maps, while the War and India Offices and the Admiralty overhauled their intelligence departments in the 1870s and 1880s, impressed by the detailed maps used successfully by the Prussians to conquer France in ...”

“... be passed to him. One night he departed early and went to sleep in the cowshed as usual. What he said happened afterwards was hard to believe, even for people who lived in an age of daily miracles. He told the abbess that a mysterious figure had appeared in his dream and commanded him to sing of the creation of the world. Was it an angel or a demon? The ...”

“... course of warming, some of which have proved surprisingly accurate. The Jamaican plantation owner Edward Long envisaged something not unlike the American Midwest of today – an agroindustrial ecotopia where the climate would be warmed by the ‘fires and smoke of ten thousand crowded cities hereafter to be built, and by a general subjection of the soil to ...”

“... his ex-patient Joan Rivière moved into the camp of the heretic Melanie Klein, all Freud mildly said was: ‘Mrs R.’s logic and perspicacity are revealed even in her error ... Is it not time to end this not altogether agreeable episode? I should be sorry if Mrs R. continued to be discouraged or estranged.’ Is there, under this chivalry, a strong sense ...”

“... to break the law in some ways and such breaches can, or will, never be prosecuted,’ Donaldson said in January 1988. But ‘murder is an entirely different matter.’ In other words, the Master of the Rolls says that MI5 can do what they like in the public interest, even if what they like is illegal. They are expected, rather squeamishly, to stop short of ...”

“... orders were always mesmerisingly sure, Amis knew what he meant. When Auden opened his mouth and said, ‘Look, stranger,’ or ‘Consider this, and in our time,’ he was listened to with rapt attention, which in itself constituted obedience to orders. Also immediate atavistic loyalty to the tall unwounded leader, which is the personal factor determining ...”

“... attempts to connect Thomas More’s defence of ecclesiastical interpretative prerogative to Edward Coke’s similar claims for legal expertise, without apparently being aware that More’s own concept of law was essentially transparent. In contrast to matters divine, More desired that secular law be written so as to ‘be read or understood by every one ...”

“... have in recent times found their hour. Addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the Pope said, in October 1988: ‘My wish, knowing the aspirations of the Slav people, is that one day, through the creation of free institutions with sovereign power, Europe may once again cover its true geographical, and even more important, historical ...”

“... with the theatre of living, with the trials and triumphs of the body. In the same way, it might be said, Shakespeare was himself compromised, at every point in his career, by what had to be done. It was the grace of the dyer’s hand to be subdued to what it worked in. There is a danger that both Eliot and Wilson Knight may be repeating, in their own ...”

“... notions of history-writing may not accommodate the wilder ambitions of Whigs like John Morley, who said that ‘the history of England ought to end with something that might be called a moral,’ or Professor Seeley, whose Expansion of England, invigorating though it is, gave ample proof that he really believed that ‘history fades into mere literature when ...”

“... Protestants; Ruth and Jonah in Southern Swahili (spoken in the region of Zanzibar), translated by Edward Steere (1828-82), Zanzibar, 1868, and Saint Matthew by the same translator, London, 1869; Saint Matthew in Susu (spoken in French Guinea, West Africa), probably translated by J.H.A. Dupont (a West Indian of African descent, from Codrington ...”

“... to be unable to survive in the Commons: but his position had been strengthened by the failure of Edward Heath’s attempt to reach an agreement with the Liberal Leader, which established that there was no alternative government for the Queen to choose. The other aspect of the royal discretion is the right to invite a leader to form a majority administration ...”

“... at the University of Washington in Seattle exchange banalities in a parking lot: ‘Dr Mather!’ said the white man as he approached. ‘Dr Mather, it’s me. It’s Dr Faulkner.’ ‘Good evening, Dr Faulkner. How are you?’ ‘Fine, fine. How was your class?’ ‘Well, I’m having trouble with a student. An Indian student, actually. She is very ...”

“... but hard-eyed creature appeared, looked at him, gave a sort of laugh, and passed on. He felt, he said, “as if an icy hand had clutched at his heart”. He had a sudden presentiment. He saw a vision of folly, misery and ruin.’ The sex of this ‘creature’ remains unrecorded; Hesketh Pearson’s 1946 biography makes it a woman. Stanley Weintraub’s 1965 ...”