“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... drink(s) in exchange for a mint copy of Giles Goatboy, or of swopping some multi-volume reissue of John Cowper Powys for a night out on the town. The Chancery Lane idea is (or used to be) that you can sell off review copies for half their published price. The books had to be in really good condition (hence the loving care with which one would sometimes see a ...”

“... Trevor’s Tom and David Profumo’s James are simply – or not quite simply – innocents. John Fuller’s Hugh Howard, in Tell it me again, is much older – in his late forties – but acceptably an innocent abroad. Abroad is America. Hugh is an English composer, talented and successful, but a bit of a cold fish. In this sense, Fuller’s is another ...”

“... Clwyd County Council (now disbanded) and conducted by a high-powered team of three experts led by John Jillings, a former director of social services in Derbyshire. That inquiry concluded that ‘appalling’ sexual abuse went on for years in homes throughout the area. Jillings’s report was so devastating that Michael Beloff, a QC who specialises in ...”

“... of Labour during the Spanish Civil War. She was also active in the women’s movement, and took part in the protest against the Miss World contest at the Albert Hall in 1970.The inquiry has shown that the SDS focused on ‘extreme left-wing’ groups, Trotskyists in particular: ‘the International Socialists, who became the SWP in 1977; the ...”

“... be found trying to poison Lincoln while making up his ‘blue mass’, a medicine the President took for his constipation. But most readers, of course, will already know that Lincoln has four more years to live before he is shot by Herold’s friend, John Wilkes Booth, the most notorious of all those Americans who have ...”

“... When John Muir, the son of an emigrant from East Lothian to southern Wisconsin, was 16, in 1855, his father lowered him daily down a well shaft on their new farm at Hickory Hill. John cut with chisel and hammer through fine-grained sandstone until he struck ‘a fine, hearty gush of water ...”

“... and Censor’. St Clair quotes Eldon in 1793, when he was only attorney general and called Sir John Scott, telling an author that he could continue to publish his reply to Burke in ‘an octavo form so as to confine it probably to that class of readers who may consider it coolly’ (that is, people who would be unlikely to approve of it), but that as soon ...”

“... cent of the population had been born in the New Commonwealth. The National Front’s candidate, John Fairhurst, had stood in nearby Hayes and Harlington in the two 1974 elections. He wasn’t standing in Southall in the hope of securing a high vote, but because the NF thought putting up a candidate there would get them publicity. On 23 April, 2875 police ...”