“... place.’ But this particular passage comes from Mlle de Scudéry’s novel Le Grand Cyrus, which may be ‘thinly veiled’ fiction, but is still, decidedly, fiction. Craveri devotes all too little attention to the difficult questions of early modern French generic conventions, literary style, the meaning of patronage relations for literature, and the effect ...”

“... of a genocide. In reminding us of this Bevan has performed a valuable service, no matter what we may think about a rebuilt Warsaw or a cherished ruin. We have the privilege of wondering whether the fetishism of built objects (the heritage industry) might be a sign of our loss of authentic memory, as it was for Pierre Nora in his monumental survey of the ...”

“... Judith Shakespeare and, if so, on what grounds? The family has no record of any claims she may have made about its provenance; if she did believe it to be genuine, it is possible that this belief was communicated to her by spirit guides tapping on tables. It might be more apt, though, to imagine Corelli conferring this name on the girl with the pear as ...”

“... a great deal since 1865. Today’s politicians have a direct line to the divine. Lincoln may not have known God’s will, but George W. Bush is certain that he does. It is worth remembering Lincoln’s great ‘lyceum’ speech, delivered in 1838 when he was just starting out in Illinois politics. Shocked by mob attacks on abolitionists, he pleaded ...”

“... transformed British political journalism, and has left a mark even today. His true successor may be the violent, undeferential, hugely popular and not unimportant Sun newspaper. But Cobbett’s work and ideas need to be located in a transatlantic and global context. And their political hybridity is something that needs to be explained, not simply ...”

“... him the love he craves. From My Life to the writing of Chartist poems was a shorter step than it may seem. In his search for employment, Jones had approached the Anti-Corn Law League. He had also been keeping political company and made his first public speech at an Anti-Corn Law debate in Willis’s Rooms late in 1845: he was about to become Ernest ...”

“... ancestry. The number of our ancestors increases exponentially, generation by generation. We may have only four grandparents, but go back a few dozen generations and we have more ancestors than the current world population. Our nuclear DNA, inherited from both parents, is a patchwork. Mitochondrial DNA might be inherited from one maternal ancestor, and ...”

“... a koori or murri tribe (these are the current preferred terms for Aboriginal peoples). All this may sound politically correct, but the fact is that words empower and disempower. Maybe such protocols of acknowledgment work, maybe they don’t. If they work, it is because of a slow cultural osmosis. If they don’t, it’s because they have run dry with ...”

“... of seven they were taken from their homes and put into military barracks, where regular anal sex may have been intended to make them grow up to be strong soldiers; once married, they could visit their wives only surreptitiously; they were outnumbered by the servile population of helots, which needed keeping under control; and were faced with the declining ...”

“... of tea and its methods of production, and suggests that because it is made with boiling water, it may have been responsible for keeping great numbers of people alive in a world of water-borne fatal diseases, but much of the book describes the grisly social, political and economic particulars of the history of tea production. There was a familiar degree of ...”

“... with the war effort given his mistreatment by the British government a couple of years earlier. In May 1940, just after Germany attacked the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, Perutz was taken from Cambridge to Bury St Edmunds under Churchill’s policy of internment. A little later he was moved to Huyton, near Liverpool, and then moved again in mid-June to ...”

“... prominent, except in the world of ballet, than the much larger post-1917 Russian emigration. They may have made little impact on the old entrenched professions – medicine, law – but their impact on more open fields, and eventually on science and public life, was quite remarkable. In Britain émigrés transformed art history and visual culture, as well as ...”

“... after his death, but clearly many were not. There will be more work for editors. Some influences may seem trivial; a thought or a phrase encountered in his youth might remain hidden in memory for years and emerge in answer to a particular summons. For instance, Anthony Collett’s remarkable book The Changing Face of England (1926) was mined rather ...”

“... earlier to tuberculosis, contracted from his mother, brother or wife, or to the alcoholism which may not have killed him but certainly escorted him to an early grave. A better place to start might have been with an even greater mystery than those lost six days: Poe’s secret marriage at the age of 26 to his 13-year-old cousin Virginia Clemm, a ...”

“... ships’ lagging, dust from dry walls – has also thickened the lining around his lungs and may be partly responsible for his condition. Two of his old workmates died of asbestosis. Yesterday I went up to the blood clinic with him. He doesn’t want a chaperone but can get dizzy and forgetful. My mother has arthritis in her hips, and is all but ...”