“... 1850 Britton could report that ‘since the commencement of this century, it may be asserted that more has been written and published on the life … of Shakspere, than during the whole of the preceding period between the acting of his first drama and the year 1800.’ Katherine Duncan-Jones, in her brilliant, scholarly and concise Portraits of Shakespeare ...”

“... not changed in their fundamentals. In 1943, Robert Oppenheimer assigned its production to Charles Thomas, central research director of the Monsanto chemical company. He set up a laboratory in the indoor tennis court of his mother-in-law’s large and remote estate in Dayton, Ohio. The polonium was made by irradiating slugs of bismuth metal in one of the new ...”

“... The Foundling Hospital​ was established in Bloomsbury in 1739 by the philanthropist Thomas Coram, ‘for the education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children’. Strictly speaking, they weren’t foundlings: the parents, or more usually the mother, had to hand over their offspring and were instructed to ‘affix on each child some particular writing, or other distinguishing mark or token, so that the child may be known thereafter if necessary ...”

“... study of witchcraft in Europe. Like Professor Mitchison, Dr Larner saw Scotland in 1600 as having more in common with the continent of Europe than it did with its big southern neighbour, and she suggested that Scottish witchcraft cases had more in common with Continental than with English cases. This is true both for the ...”

“... project was a live one, working hard, after paying its respects, to defuse the purple excesses of Thomas De Quincey’s On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts. This is P.D. James at her best; the fastidious dabbling in horror, the forensic eye finding order in chaos. Now, 22 years later, with the oven-ready blockbuster, Original Sin, she returns to ...”

“... of this kind still often have something raffish and opportunistic about them. And nowhere do they more plainly invite suspicion than in the titles they bear. A Mania for Sentences, The Mirror of Criticism, In the Age of Prose... the titles hover between modesty and grandeur, as Trilling’s did and as do the books themselves. ‘...”

“... funeral, ‘very little regretted even by his nearest acquaintance’, or as Henry Fielding put it more bluntly, ‘pissed upon with scorn and contempt’. Foote’s celebrity status can be measured in the proliferation of theatrical prints and paintings of him onstage, working the audience with his idiosyncratic blend of goofy humour and topical satire, the ...”

“... Scots, on which he had been working for the past ten years. A quarter of the translation was in more or less final form; the rest of it was in a revised first draft. His son, R.L.C. Lorimer, has edited it very faithfully, and has also, with others, established the W.L. Lorimer Memorial Trust Fund, which has made possible the handsome printing of this ...”

“... of one set of political ideas in favour of another, older, just as discredited and probably far more violent – the belief in race and nation. Riddle? Farce? Silence? The regimes of Eastern Europe may have been oppressive and iniquitous, but the fiction and poetry written under them were for a time quite outstanding. This was partly because of the ...”

“... euphemistically as ‘the Troubles’. Almost three decades of violence followed, with the loss of more than 3500 lives. Operation Banner, the longest continuous deployment by the British army, did not secure peace any more than its counterinsurgency campaigns before and since. Far from it. Intelligence played a part, as ...”

“... name was performed in the late 1580s. It was probably bloody and Senecan, and probably written by Thomas Kyd. Another one (probably Shakespeare’s) was performed on board a ship anchored off the coast of Sierra Leone in 1607 at the request of the captain, William Keeling: ‘I invited Captain Hawkins to a ffishe dinner, and had Hamlet acted abord me: which I ...”

“... years, the last ten of the reign of George II and the first 11 of his grandson’s. There are also more spasmodic Last Journals, published in 1859, and a still unpublished continuation taking the story up to 1791. The Memoirs of George III, as ordinarily understood, refer to the published series which stops at 1771. These are the best-known of Walpole’s ...”

“... and peel away,bickering, into the air’s tow.Too cold, even for them.I circle the observatory one more time:mine the only footprints in the snow.Now the night has fallen, Edinburgh comes alightas if each building’s shellhas a fire inside that burned. The follies– lit exhibits – stand here on the hillin their white stone; the Castle glows.And the streets ...”

“... and especially on the first, A Fistful of Dollars (1964) – the others are For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), and Once upon a Time in the West (1968) – ruins this comfortable perspective beyond recall. Well, nothing is beyond recall if we really need it, but we are going to have to work harder at the ...”

“... year that the Children’s Charter extended new legal protection to the young, the English painter Thomas Gotch portrayed his young daughter in majesty like a Madonna by Duccio, with a huge nimbus around her head, and called the image The Child Enthroned. Concurrently, the Swiss Ferdinand Hodler celebrated the birth of his son with an equally awed work, The ...”