“... who don’t need to live something in order to write it, who use their ‘imaginations’. William Vollmann, with whom Zambreno professes a sympathy, intentionally puts himself in extreme situations, then writes about them. David Foster Wallace (to whom Zambreno doesn’t relate) in his fiction seemingly did not. So when Keeler, offended by ...”

“... in the Kremlin wall, as well as foreign Comintern luminaries such as the US union activist William ‘Big Bill’ Haywood. Physical incorporation in the walls of the citadel was the ultimate honour for the illustrious dead. As Brown says, the walls haven’t gone away. Circumvallation thrives, and not just as heritage townscape: today’s barriers are ...”

“... the more aristocratic foreign visitors to London’, making it sound like something out of a Henry James novel. Newnham-Davis wrote that Mrs Myra Washington dined there, an American who knew ‘most people who are worth knowing in Europe’. As she sat at her table, her ‘cream-coloured miracle of a dress’ was reflected in all the mirrors. What​ explains ...”

“... besatined brats. (Five years later Van Dyck was dead, aged only 42, and the next court appointee, William Dobson, painted the Prince of Wales with early Civil War alarums behind him: by that time, young Charles Stuart appears irredeemably devious.) Intuition beats cold reasoning: that was what Van Dyck inferred from his study of Titian. But his own intuitions ...”

“... of Tyerman’s unsentimental look at the careers of 28 Harrow Heads, from the first incumbent, William Launce, who took up office at what was then called the Harrow Free Grammar School in 1615, with the vicar’s son as his first pupil, to Ian Beer, the last Head but one, who retired in 1991. A few emerge as hopelessly inadequate to the task of running a ...”

“... have been better selected; if the younger Sickert deserves any credence, a certain Francis E. James is one of the great painters of the 1890s, but maybe his works, like many others mentioned here, have sunk too deep in the historical oubliette to be retrieved. And then, one might complain that the sheer scholarly discretion of the editing under-represents ...”

“... if helpfully complaisant, philanderer. Among other men she was attracted to, the novelist William Gerhardie proved to have sadistic tendencies which she didn’t enjoy, while the theatre and film director Tony Richardson was so nervous of her that when lodging with the Smiths in St John’s Wood he hardly dared to take a bath. Manning’s generally ...”

“... accurately as possible. Crippen certainly didn’t want any more children. Charlotte’s brother, William, would later say that she’d written to her family before her death, from their new home in Salt Lake City, to tell them that Crippen was forcing her to have abortions. She had already submitted to ‘two dangerous cuttings’ when she wrote: ‘My ...”

“... into world dominators. Vital steps to its development included the technical breakthrough of William Levett, the rector of Buxted, and the Sussex ironmaster Ralph Hogge, who in the early 1540s worked out how to make guns out of cast-iron (not welded iron or cast-bronze) which did not blow up and were a quarter of the price of gunmetal guns. Because of ...”

“... to ‘British and Irish Authors’, a high-quality series which includes Patrick Parrinder on James Joyce and John Batchelor on H.G. Wells. Barnard gets a great deal into his short book, presenting a rather different Keats from that of the many other Keats scholars and biographers. Keats’s vividness has been present to his admirers in many forms. In ...”

“... its correspondence columns: this time with its refusal to print Wynne Godley’s refutation of William Rees-Mogg’s claim that the British economy has outperformed the Japanese by 75 per cent over the last decade.) The Book War with the Times was a great test for the NBA and clinching proof that, this time, the agreement would hold. The publishers won ...”

“... tendency to think in terms of dramatic absolutes. A crude version of this argument can be found in William Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a relentless piece of Nazi pedigree-hunting with some claim to be considered, despite strong competition, the worst book ever written on German history. Others have argued more subtly for the role played by ...”

“... he was the sixth most caricatured individual in Britain; and only three other politicians, William Pitt the Younger, Charles James Fox and North, featured in prints more. Yet, as Robinson points out, before 1778 visual representations of Burke were rare: and this is suggestive. In retrospect, Burke’s speeches in ...”

“... merchants and clerics of Genoa or Antwerp. In his catalogue essay, Malcolm Rogers quotes William Sanderson, his near-contemporary, as saying that Van Dyck was the first painter that ‘e’er put ladies’ dress into a careless romance’, and goes on to quote Herrick’s ‘Whenas in silks my Julia Goes’. As well as ease and sweet disorder there ...”

“... begin a letter to a woman with an Italian name ‘Dear Dago’, while the state’s other senator, James Eastland, would not only glare at New York’s Jewish senator, Jacob Javits, and say things like ‘I don’t like you or your kind’ but actually proposed that Congress limit the number of Jews conducting interstate businesses because ten thousand Jewish ...”