“... engineering for contemporary architecture (Rogers and Piano were assisted by the great engineer Peter Rice, who often consulted for RRP thereafter). Second, it offered one response to the open question of what post-industrial design might look like (‘most of us want it to look like something,’ Reyner Banham once remarked; ‘we don’t want form to ...”

“... Christians that had laid waste to the refineries and the surrounding boom town. Crude World is Peter Maass’s account of the violence, tyranny, poverty, environmental degradation, corporate malfeasance, corruption and state failure that seem to be fuelled by oil. By these lights, what happened in Baku might be taken as confirmation of the ‘resource ...”

“... generations will lose the secret. The Manarrs have two children, Helena and Hugo. Helena marries Peter Koenig, son of the formidable Grandmother Koenig, who lives enshrined with her ancient German maid among massive furniture. Angel is Helena and Peter’s only child, a bespectacled little girl who has to endure the ordeal ...”

“... and absorbing book. The origins of the Abbey – to be precise, the Collegiate Church of St Peter in Westminster – are shrouded in uncertainty. A Saxon foundation on Thorney Island, the one dry spot in the fenland that once stretched from Chelsea to Battersea, the Abbey formed the West minster to St Paul’s East minster. The settlement which, under ...”

“... from his Utopia. Even so, it had been Erasmus who had given him letters to friends such as Peter Giles, dedicatee of Utopia, in Antwerp and it was Erasmus who saw to the publication of Lucian, the epigrams and Utopia, bustling about to secure commendatory letters and so enhance them. Erasmus also coined and disseminated the description ‘a man for all ...”

“... follow. Roe knew Coryate quite well. They had first met in England, in the courtly ambit of Henry, Prince of Wales, and Coryate had been loosely attached to the Embassy since Roe’s arrival in India two years previously. The Ambassador had an ambivalent attitude to this eccentric but deeply experienced traveller. Also in the English party was the embassy ...”

“... Institut des lettres et manuscrits as part of an exhibition entitled Sade: Marquis de l’ombre, prince des Lumières (the last word of the punning title might be translated as either ‘light’ or ‘enlightenment’). The Musée d’Orsay, too, mounted a lavish exhibition inspired by Sade’s visions with a title – Attaquer le soleil – taken from The ...”

“... left little money, having, says Bellori, ‘spent everything on living magnificently, more like a prince than a painter’) included a wonderful collection of paintings – 17 by Titian alone, according to the inventory taken after his death; but there were doubless studio props and drapes as well. The Countess of Sussex was able to find compensation for the ...”

“... targeted in a number of Van Gogh’s columns in 2003 and 2004 because of her relationship with Prince Johan-Friso, the queen’s second son. Wisse Smit was bright, ambitious and attractive, while Johan-Friso was at best dull and worthy, but she also had what is known as a colourful past. She had once had an intimate relationship with a married Bosnian ...”

“... V. Prochnow Jr, with 65 entries by Prochnow senior; and in Quotations For Our Time, by Dr Laurence Peter (author of The Peter Principle), with 37 entries of his own. It’s not wholly a new conceit: even L. T. Hoyt, last century, was not so unjust to himself as to deny his own verses comparison with those of Tennyson and ...”

“... Aretino (1492-1556), author of the risqué Sonetti Lussuriosi; Machiavelli (1469-1527), whose Prince outlines an instrumental conception of religion as a useful theatre for the new ruler that chimed with a sense of De tribus’s (non-existent) thesis; Michael Servetus (1511-53), burned at the stake; and Bernardino Ochino, author of Disputa intorno ...”

“... the shortage of men as a lack of romance and took a slew of marriage proposals in her stride. Prince Albert, Duke of York was ‘quite a nice youth’ but he hardly stood out from the crowd. It seems to have been sheer determination that made Bertie, the stammering, nerve-racked and less than handsome second son of George V, persist in proposing to the ...”

“... shepherd life.) But the ‘King and Collector’ of the exhibition title is perhaps best read as a prince who developed a taste for oils on canvas while visiting the Spanish Habsburg court in a failed bid to secure a wife and who, once crowned in 1625, had the impetus and opportunity to splurge. Cognoscenti and hustlers pushed through the gates that opened ...”

“... with several days’ notice) and then fall to, licking the same dish. It’s not, to quote Peter Cook in another connection, enough to keep the mind alive. Perhaps it’s a culture of this sort – simultaneously overfed and undernourished – that leads people into the ghastly habit of using familiar first names to describe celebrities they will never ...”

“... thought they knew better than anyone how to spend it.’ The charity grew quickly. Elton John, Prince, Stevie Wonder and the Killers performed at opulent gala dinners. Donations rolled in.Ark initially prioritised overseas projects, particularly in Eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. A UK-focused spinoff, Ark Schools, was founded in 2004. As political ...”