“... many fragrances, finally choosing one and saying, ‘That’s what I expected,’ surely she said: ‘That’s what I was waiting for’? Later on, translating from the poet Reverdy, he offers ‘One does not see the knees of he who prays’, and, from Chanel: ‘He wasn’t free and nor was I.’ Such limping quotations only reinforce the somewhat ...”

“... in addition campaigned for the revived Malthusian League. At the same time, under the influence of Edward Aveling, she became excited by a romantically-tinged version of Darwinism and was among the first women to embark on a science degree at University College London. She lived round the corner from Bradlaugh, and his daughters became fellow students. But ...”

“... my lord, that I thought you had been in the boat, and would have brought me to the ship, as you said ye would. Where Honor Lisle was busy with annuities and inheritance on her return to England, Frances Nelson sets her sights a little lower. Two months after Aboukir Bay, she writes to Nelson, c/o Vanguard, about her housekeeping costs at Round Wood: Every ...”

“... prays that ‘man’s long journey through the night / May not have been in vain.’ When Gascoyne said he belonged to Europe rather than England, you can see what he had in mind, but too much of the poetry as a result seems to occupy an uneasy linguistic no man’s land, somewhere between Paris and home in Teddington. Like Devlin’s and Coffey’s, much of ...”

“... for one difference. In a well-ordered and stable society (England in the time of the gross Edward), children are as clearly defined a minority group as Jews and Negroes in other times and places.’ The beleaguered nature of these fictional families (several of whom are further isolated by the death or misfortune of a parent) gives Nesbit’s books a ...”

“... for controversy. The novel is tremendously fluent if not precise or subtle – Ring Lardner Jr said that Trumbo’s writing ‘was almost as facile as his speech’. His predilection for a certain kind of freewheeling bombast often led him to take up radical stances he couldn’t maintain. His opposition to war failed to survive Operation Barbarossa and ...”

“... variously at about 50 per cent (1998) and 84 per cent (1999). Lord Callaghan, Lady Thatcher, Sir Edward Heath, John Major and Cardinal Winning all met the Commissioners. So did the editors of the Times and the Guardian, Lord Habgood, Lord Howe, the Duke of Buccleuch (the only duke to surface), Professors Scruton and Bogdanor, as well as spokesmen for Ubley ...”

“... spoke only once before he pulled the lever and the wooden trapdoor opened beneath her. She said: “Here we are again!” Her eyes were still upon them as she fell.’ The same mixture, black farce, ceremonies of death, catch-phrases. The executioner in clown make-up. Mr and Mrs Punch having their little ‘domestics’, in company with ...”

“... riding-habits. The same year Henry Poole became tailor to the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII, and soon both Worth and Poole, who had actually helped finance the Emperor’s return to France, had established a vast clientele of kings, princes and grand-dukes, stretching across Europe and beyond. Worth dressed the Princess von Metternich, Poole ...”

“... the saviour of Paradise’, ‘O terra incognita’. All of this brings to mind what Frost once said about ecphonesis: ‘American poets use it in practically one tone, that of grandeur: “Oh Soul!” “Oh Hills!” – “Oh Anything!” That’s the way they go. But think of what “oh” is really capable: the “oh” of scorn, the “oh” of ...”

“... of the national past against the incursions of the contemporary and the foreign: It has been said, and I believe truly, that every individual of this country, whose mind has been at all cultivated, feels a pride in being able to boast of our great dramatick poet, Shakspeare, as his countryman: and proportionate to our respect and veneration for that ...”

“... dominance was reinforced by the combination of Christianity and barbarian conquest, which, as Edward Gibbon observed in the case of the Roman Empire, is a very effective destroyer of cultures. With all due respect to Las Casas and to the moral scruples of the Spanish crown, with all admiration for the Jesuits’ protection of the Indians, we must never ...”

“... the house intact with all its jumble in the box room. ‘Go ahead and look in there,’ Vera said … In the box room were cartons and papers and rolls of things she’d inherited from an aunt who had worked for Mary Ellen and Henry’s son, Harold (who was called Felix). Vera had seen Felix in his old age … [she] was a beautiful woman in her seventies ...”

“... was a commitment from one of the political parties; hence the question Annie Kenney shouted at Sir Edward Grey at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester: ‘Will the Liberal government give women the vote?’ It would not: the cabinet was divided. H.H. Asquith, prime minister from 1908, was an ‘anti’, and the government was in any case preoccupied with its ...”

“... to ‘speak … sing … fight and work’ for it. One of Tyndall’s fellow Queenwood teachers, Edward Frankland, had been invited to work with the chemist Robert Bunsen in Marburg, and in 1848 Tyndall decided to join him in Germany and study for a PhD, using his savings from railway surveying. In Marburg, he rose at 5 a.m., sitting in the cold in a ...”