“... solid chargehand’s tread and decent low voice as he rounded the corner with his workmate, John Armitage ...’ The parody seems to invite a warm-hearted review. What is wrong with it? The serious Hoggart snaps: ‘Epithets are used for their likely effect on the reader, not to catch the nature of what is being described.’ Such books are no use, with ...”

“... of Robeson’s music was even more problematic. He was happy enough to perform songs like ‘John Brown’s Body’ and ‘Old Man River’, written by whites about what the blacks must be suffering, but he thought jazz had been ‘debased’ by white influence. When someone in a Des Moines audience asked for ‘St Louis Blues’, Robeson’s manager ...”

“... mention the 1860 battle (nor sub Huxley or Darwin or Hooker). Another portrait, another angle. John Collier’s 1890 painting is the most familiar image: a stiff, hard, sad old man, a man of power – he was ‘the Pope’ and ‘the General’ even before he had rank to pull. Collier was good at old men in pain – he caught Darwin’s next-to-last ...”

“... consistent, until ill-health restrained her, in going after it. Even Tomalin’s description of John Middleton Murry’s role in Mansfield’s life as ‘crucial and largely unfortunate’ seems to me glib. Is it right to ignore, as Tomalin does, that farewell letter in which Mansfield wrote: ‘I think no two lovers ever walked the earth more joyfully ...”

“... add up to a portrayal. The same is true of people Ashton appears to approve of. He tells us that John Pym had skill and statesmanship and that he was a leader of the ‘middle-group’. He is also allowed a few bit-appearances during the various Parliamentary episodes of the 1620s, but that is about it, which seems too little for someone whose role in the ...”

“... Lindsay Anderson lives in a flat in one of the redbrick turn-of-the-century blocks behind John Barnes in Swiss Cottage. With its solid turreted houses, backing on gardens, Can-field, Compayne, Aberdare, Broadhurst, it’s the haunt of refugees, and Jewish old ladies, and perhaps (Lindsay would strike out that ‘perhaps’) the most European bit of ...”

“... is another matter: but at least one distinguished historian of Renaissance theology, the Jesuit John O’Malley, who contributes a postscript to the book, seems to find his conclusions broadly convincing, so they deserve to be examined closely. In Byzantine and early Italian art the infant Christ was customarily shown either in a loose robe or in swaddling ...”

“... this year all the trade, literary and political figures present at the opening in Budapest travel north on the following day to the coalmining town of Salgotarjan. A crowd has gathered outside the arts centre; there are speeches, poetry, a choir performance and a band playing Country and Western, with Hungarian lyrics. It is raining again, but the crowd is ...”

“... one of the new breed of ruthless mercenaries emerging in the later 14th century, men like Sir John Hawkwood, the leader of the legendary White Company, whose monument can still be seen in the Duomo in Florence next to Dante’s, who hired themselves out to petty tyrants and brought terror and destruction wherever they went. Moreover, Jones ...”

“... especially to mark speakers from the lower classes. Complementary points are implied by the late John Thomas Low, writing on the wealth (or at least number) of modern historical plays in Scots – if you want to have Scots-speaking characters who are not peasants, you must go back in time – and by W.F.H. Nicolaisen, who shows how often novelists use ...”

“... local surgeon. At 21 he moved to London to continue his medical studies as anatomical assistant to John Hunter at St George’s Hospital. Although Jenner returned to his Berkeley medical practice in 1773, Hunter had recognised Jenner’s scientific prowess and encouraged him in his research. ‘Why think – why not try the experiment,’ he wrote in ...”

“... differently, and that different contingencies would not have made any essential difference. John Adamson asks: what if Charles I had avoided the Civil War? In line with revisionist readings of 17th-century history, he uses this question to make a case for the non-inevitability of a clash between the King and his English Parliaments, had he not ...”

“... 1860s, western Missouri and eastern Kansas produced Border Ruffians, Jayhawkers, guerrillas and John Brown. Pro-slavery men and Abolitionists, Confederates and Union men murdered their opponents. Unionists expelled many non-combatants in an attempt to deny guerrillas support. The Southern guerrillas rode under the black flag, slaughtering their ...”

“... serve to illuminate unjustifiable anomalies in British politics, such as higher spending per head north of the border and the right of Scottish MPs at Westminster to vote on specifically English legislation. These unfairnesses would not go down well with Middle England, and would almost certainly bring about an English nationalist backlash. Scottish ...”

“... victim, tethered, and ready for slaughter. In Where Did It All Go Right? Alvarez’s former friend John Wain receives the same treatment – punished for being feeble of mind and feeble of body – and there are numerous other little tussles and boasts. Alvarez is a writer who is certainly not oblivious of the extent of his own charms and perhaps he rather ...”