“... seen the republication of some American women writers of the mid-to-late 20th century, among them Elizabeth Hardwick, Jean Stafford (these two had been better known as Robert Lowell’s wives) and Lucia Berlin, whose luminous short stories seem to me as good as anyone’s. Now Picador have published Blue in Chicago, a collection of stories by Bette ...”

“... cruel’. We find Rawdon at Turnham Green ‘scoffing hot pies’, and James I’s daughter Elizabeth Stuart, not yet the Winter Queen and painted in her pomp, ‘all coral lips and candyfloss hair’. There are ‘snobs’, men get ‘tooled up’, ‘culture wars’ rage, and a poor man called Atkins ‘shat himself’. Childs also has an eye for ...”

“... the island. Money from the legal aid authority has paid for chickens and a coop for Denico in St Elizabeth, a motorbike and a driving licence for Chris in Kingston, and the restocking of Lorna’s market stall in Maypen. I don’t let the balance get close to zero – you never know when the next hurricane will ...”

“... to the letter: Elder John is based on Brother Egbert Gillette, who was tried alongside Eldress Elizabeth Sears. Rumours that Marchant was pregnant, and not really at death’s door, were disproved by the medical examiner. (In Banks’s version, the medical examiner gives false testimony about the pregnancy after poor Sadie’s body is exhumed.) In fact, no ...”

“... him. (Van Dine’s 19th rule: ‘The motive should always be personal.’) Crowe, whom Mary Elizabeth Braddon admired, fell out of favour (Dickens wrote that she had gone ‘stark mad – and stark naked – on the spirit-rapping imposition. She was found t’other day in the street, clothed only in her chastity, a pocket-handkerchief and a visiting ...”

“... rich and powerful didn’t abandon hope that a lowly alchemist might yet change the world. In 1565 Elizabeth set up a Dutch alchemist in his own workshop at Somerset House, prompting a flurry of envious petitions to the crown. By now, England’s entitlement to alchemic rewards was no longer justified only by antique precedent, but by the approval that had ...”

“... quickly backed by its board of trustees, unlike the president of the University of Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Magill, who apologised for her testimony and resigned soon after. Claudine Gay also apologised. Her bosses on the Harvard Corporation kept their counsel for several days but eventually gave her their backing – just about. ‘Our extensive ...”

“... on a particular image of an Appalachian: a hard-working, white frontiersman. Yet this account, as Elizabeth Catte argues in What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia, depends on tracing Central Appalachia’s inhabitants back to Scots-Irish pioneers whose values – self-reliance, pride, violence – were insulated from modern culture by the mountains that ...”

“... was so recognised until the run ended with William McKie, knighted after he had conducted at Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953.The person to whom most credit should go for moderating this traditional prejudice and opening the door to a new era of composition was an Irishman. Stanford was born in Dublin in 1852 to a musical family: his father was a ...”

“... the Gemäldegalerie houses Gothic statues of wimpled ladies, a Virgin Mary with St Elizabeth, two miserable-looking canons from Utrecht. Goldin’s own phantom is her sister. Sisters, Saints and Sibyls is projected onto three parallel screens, like a triptych. It was first shown in 2004 in the chapel of the Salpêtrière in Paris, an octagonal ...”

“... on an ongoing basis and the most recent ones [sic] … are available on our media centre.’ As Elizabeth Davidson, senior project manager for the post-2014 restoration, points out, once the first SOBC in 2021 found in favour of rebuilding it would have been possible to secure the structure internally and remove the scaffolding, which continues to cost a ...”

“... next week’; ‘I take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife’; ‘I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth’; ‘I give and bequeath my watch to my brother’; ‘I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow.’ Austin’s systematic exploration and analysis of the complex linguistic territory of speech as a form of action was presented as the William James ...”

“... fiery birds and flowers. Experts entered the picture, such as the Dutchmen hired by Henry VIII; Elizabeth I, who had a soft spot for fireworks, created the position of ‘Fire Master of England’. A massive display at Warwick Castle in 1572 resulted in several houses being burned down (the queen raised a £25 compensation fund from her loyal subjects), and ...”

“... as anything else, she married Edwin Rollins, a white, gay legal aid lawyer; they had two children, Elizabeth and Jonathan.In January 1964 Negro Digest published ‘Suffer the Children’, inspired by the racist bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama the previous year, which had killed four girls. It was an elegy rather than a ...”

“... too dowdy, perhaps, and too complex. But now it’s all the rage. Just possibly the death of Queen Elizabeth II, which brought an end to a long age of stability for the British monarchy, has opened up the prospect that the country might one day want to think of alternatives. Whatever the reason, the resurgence in interest is to be welcomed. The republic is a ...”