“... happily in the ornamental pond there, but the other, taking advantage of the not very long lawn, took off for home, presumably Regent’s Park. In the morning its companion did the same.26 January. Come back on an early train from Yorkshire to catch the last day of the National Art Collections Fund exhibition at Christie’s. Expecting St James’s to be ...”

“... when questioned, agreed: ‘I shall tell you the truth,’ he said. ‘I loved him greatly, I took pleasure in his company and I slept with him several times.’ Yet he said they had not had sex, a denial reiterated when a disbelieving bailo asked outright whether he had taken the active or passive role. Gregorio then stated that he had, however, twice ...”

“... refuges for repentant prostitutes or bankrupted merchants. Shortly before his death in 1791, John Wesley looked back on the century as one in which ‘benevolence and compassion toward all the forms of human woe have increased in a manner not known before, from the earliest ages of the world.’ Not everyone was sympathetic to forms of woe – especially ...”

“... of Canterbury in the run-up to Anne Boleyn’s coronation. In a letter printed on 20 October 1890, John Marshall RA proposed an alternative theory: that the skull constituted ‘a punning signature of the great artist’, ‘hohl’ and ‘bein’ being the German (loosely translated) for ‘hollow bone’.There were debates, too, about the identities and ...”

“... which it might not otherwise have roused. Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll (the murdered man). Sir John Henry (‘Jock’) Delves Broughton (the presumed murderer). Diana, Broughton’s second wife, who was later to become successively the wife of Gilbert de Préville Colvile and of Tom, the fourth Baron Delamere. Gwladys, Lady Delamere (Tom’s ...”

“... she was determined, now, to inhabit only incongruous places, her disinterested career in the world took her to work in a local ballroom, one of a chain which operates throughout the provinces.’ At the end of the book, she lies dead in her gas-filled room, ‘a painted doll, bluish at the extremities’. This is surely a lot of masquerade ...”

“... long afterwards the producer died suddenly and that was that. The scarlet Woolsack, described by John Wells as ‘a sofa sacred to the law’, plays a sit-on part throughout this book. Though periodically restuffed with Commonwealth wool, it retains all the ‘ritual magic’ of medieval days. During the Gordon Riots of 1780 it was the holy refuge on which ...”

“... their families to the coast. The inspiration behind the scheme was George Lansbury, the subject of John Shepherd’s biography, a book as meticulous as it is generous. It is nonetheless timely: just as the prison service has brown-filled this pleasant site, so, too, New Labour has trampled on the radical socialism of which Lansbury was one of the finest ...”

“... their friend Stevenson, owner of the Stone Balloon. They vied for the going talent and Stevenson took to booking Blood, Sweat & Tears and the Pointer Sisters, signing acts to geographically restrictive contracts to keep his edge. The owners of both clubs were soon in over their heads. Jim took out hundreds of thousands of ...”

“... I was in the House at the time of the negotiations and have taken the trouble to talk to those who took part in them, and I believe that it is Carrington who should take the credit. It was he who took time to argue Margaret out of her fixed positions, and whose skill, together with that of Lord Soames, the ...”

“... and Edward feels guilty: ‘He gave her so little; he denied her the simple pleasures a wife took for granted – that business of cooking his meals, remembering his sister’s birthday, putting intricate little bundles of socks into his drawer.’All four of them are middle-aged or close to it, and have children. Edward and Binny ‘could never do ...”

“... one, where he met Edward Bawden. The two shared a love of neglected landscape watercolourists – John Sell Cotman, Alexander Cozens, Francis Towne and Samuel Palmer; they made a pilgrimage to Palmer’s Shoreham in 1926. Paul Nash, who taught them at the RCA, described their cohort as ‘an outbreak of talent’ and helped Ravilious and Bawden to find work ...”

“... In 1830 the prophet John Wroe asked his congregation of Christian Israelites in Ashton-under-Lyne for seven virgins to serve in his household. The Israelites had already built a Sanctuary and four gatehouses at Ashton, in the belief that the Lancashire cotton town was to be the site of the New Jerusalem. Mr Wroe got his virgins, but less than a year later he was almost lynched by his flock after the church elders had acquitted him on charges of indecency ...”

“... was: ‘Gentlemen, the Times is printed – by steam.’ The year was 1814; the proprietor was John Walter II; the new technology was the Koenig steam-driven press capable of over a thousand impressions an hour, against the 250 impressions which was all the old Stanhope iron press could manage; and his tactic of secrecy and confrontation (he was frightened ...”

“... back to their places, for they were aware that it was his rough hand that packed them up and took them to rehearsals. ‘What!’ he cried. ‘Rebelling again, are you? Just wait! Pretty soon they’re going to put out Beethoven’s Eroica symphony, and then I should like to see which one of you can move a limb or a key.’   ‘Oh no! Not ...”