“... wife. Hill Boothby had, however, made a sacred promise to care for the children of her friend Mary Meynell, who died in 1753, and Hill committed herself to the task until the end of her life in January 1756. We know that Johnson had a long correspondence with her. He tells John Taylor in 1756: ‘I never did exchange letters regularly but with dear Miss ...”

“... to outdated Dixieland jazz. In ‘Dexter’s Deck’ (1945), the tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon interpolates ‘Sonny Boy’, one of Al Jolson’s most famous blackface numbers, introduced in his second talky, The Singing Fool (1928); as in Parker, Gordon’s manner is not bitter or satiric. The tenor saxophonist ...”

“... to a takeover bid by MAI plc, the owners of Meridian TV, but before the deal had been made public. Mary Archer, the wife of the Conservative peer Lord Archer, was a non-executive director of Anglia and had been present at board meetings at which the takeover had been discussed. In a statement, the DTI confirmed that inspectors were investigating ‘possible ...”

“... not getting back) – was shocking in its matter-of-factness:I was hanging around with Dexter Gordon. We smoked pot and took Dexedrine tablets, and they had inhalers in those days that had little yellow strips of paper in them that said ‘poison’, so we’d put these strips in our mouths, behind our teeth. They really got you roaring as an upper: your ...”

“... was nearly 20, she was the darling of the press, as cute and dimpled as that other little sunbeam, Mary Pickford. Of all the things she liked in America, ‘the very most’, she told reporters, ‘is the shortcake strawberry’, charming the pants off them as she waved ‘goodbysky’. Though ‘Little Lydie’ seemed demure in her sandals and simple frocks ...”

“... and Mabel’s favourite locations for their adulterous liaisons, although, according to Lyndall Gordon, who tells the whole story in lurid, gripping detail in Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds (2010), they proved adept at finding a range of love nests in Amherst, and even, or so their diaries suggest, took to experimenting ...”

“... site originally sponsored by that opinionated and self-destructive Victorian Evangelical, General Gordon. The pastor was trying to encourage them to buy models of Herod’s Temple; ‘After all, we all want the Temple rebuilt, don’t we?’ he coaxed. ‘Oh yes!’ came the enthusiastic chorus. You might say that the Jerusalem Syndrome began with King ...”

“... this case was a desperate State Department – with John Negroponte as the ghoulish go-between and Gordon Brown as the blushing bridesmaid – fearful that if it did not push this through both parties might soon be too old for recycling. The bride was certainly in a hurry, the groom less so. Brokers from both sides engaged in lengthy negotiations on the size ...”

“... an accolade bestowed in 1924, on the occasion of a special visit by King George V and Queen Mary towards the end of the season. The programme culminated, at the king’s request, with the Sea Songs (he found ‘Rule, Britannia!’ a ‘jolly fine tune’, infinitely to be preferred to ‘The Red Flag’). The BBC’s sponsorship and transmissions ...”

“... Potter). This was part of a cultural revival. Union Jacks began to appear in the oddest places: on Mary Quant miniskirts and draped round the shoulders of Pete Townshend (Patriots is always keen to assert the world-beating quality of British pop). Weight seizes on this, arguing that such ‘promiscuous use’ of the national flag was ‘the most visible sign ...”

“... In her rollicking Lives like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds (2010), Lyndall Gordon suggests that Emily would not have taken well to being excluded from areas of her own house for hours at a time while her brother and his mistress did God knows what behind closed doors. Lavinia, on the other hand, quickly became an accomplice, often ...”

“... reversal, and columnists were not slow to take him up. ‘This week Goliath strode into battle,’ Mary Ann Sieghart wrote in the Times, meaning Davis. ‘We don’t yet know whether young David has fatally felled his hitherto invincible foe, but if he has, his weapons were flair, freshness, bravery and a genuine feel for contemporary politics.’ Beyond this ...”

“... members of the 1994 Group of ‘smaller research-intensive universities’(Durham, Exeter, Queen Mary and York) would be joining the Russell Group. They hadn’t changed their function at all: they were, in effect, cashing in on their success as places where large numbers of well-qualified applicants thought it was desirable to go. The existing members of ...”

“... which was a rarity in those days, and she was called – to her face, I believe – ‘Black Mary’. It was not till some two or three years after we moved that my father found it necessary to have a chauffeur, and then there was a succession of chauffeurs. One, named Keith, had a spidery handwriting in which he wrote out the weekly accounts of petrol ...”

“... crop failure, rising tides. The lesser status of their suffering only makes this more acute. As Mary Heglar has written, such suffering ‘barely registers as newsworthy. It’s just “a thing that happens” … It’s the reason Nigerians and Indians fleeing Ukraine are finding closed doors instead of open arms … everyone is used to Black and brown ...”