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“... There have been aristocrats in British politics since Arthur Balfour. But the career of ‘Prince Arthur’ was the last great expression of the old aristocratic system before it crashed. In the late 19th century a flourishing grapevine of wealthy and leisured families still clambered in profusion around the House of Commons and the Cabinet ...”

“... gravel, two great charms’. To judge from such opinions, contemporaries like Horace Walpole and Arthur Young would have regarded the present cult of the country house with amazement and incredulity. Moreover, the life which was actually lived within their walls emerges as far from beguiling. Most country houses were cold, gloomy, eerie, filthy, smelly ...”

“... numerous. All countries in pre-industrial Europe were, of course, poor by modern standards, but Arthur Young, who knew France well, thought that, with the possible exception of a few favoured areas, it was much poorer than England: ‘it reminded me of the poverty of Ireland.’ Agricultural productivity in France was only about half that across the ...”

“... caught stealing money, and was expelled and then gaoled for a month. He had fallen in love with a young prostitute called Marianne Helen Harrison and known as Nell, and had been stealing money for her to buy drink. This episode is by now well-known, though the letters approach it pretty allusively, to say the least. There is a chilly note from the ...”

“... disobedience. In America, Lafayette attached himself to George Washington, who appreciated the young man’s companionship, bravery and money. Though Lafayette was a general in name, his role in the army initially had little to do with actual fighting. When the signing of a Franco-American alliance in 1778 brought thousands of French soldiers and sailors ...”

“... Bowen, found in his diary the compensation for his complete failure to be ‘a writer’. Young diarists usually show off. Evelyn Waugh records in 1956 that in the hope of understanding his son Auberon better ‘I read the diaries I kept at his age. I was appalled at the vulgarity and priggishness.’ The point, as Dorothy Wordsworth put it, is not ...”

“... In the village of Les Estables, near the mountain of Gerbier de Jonc, where the Loire rises, a young geometer participating in the first attempt to map the whole of France is hacked to pieces by the locals. We are in the early 1740s: an increasingly powerful monarchy is seeking to control the ‘jumble of old fiefdoms’, but the rural population see ...”

“... stunningly, had Benjamin Franklin, the Sanskrit scholar Sir William Jones and the agriculturalist Arthur Young among its corresponding members – that one-horse Kentish town boasted a humane society, assorted drinking and dining clubs, an agricultural society, concert and music societies, trapball and card societies, a book society, a cricket ...”

“... Naples (Sir William Hamilton). There were political refugees, notably Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, and his brother, the Cardinal Duke of York (who was born in Rome and left only once to go to Paris in 1745 and prepare to go to England should the rebellion be successful). Many Jacobites had followed them and some may have ‘pined by ...”

“... The legend of King Arthur must be the most enduring legacy of the Middle Ages. Everyone knows it: children, scholars, readers of comic books, movie-makers. The scenes and motifs associated with it – Excalibur, the Round Table, the adultery of Guinevere, the return to Avalon – are more familiar than anything linked to real medieval kings ...”

“... became canteen workers instead. Joe Gormley was, and is, firmly against the idea of any ‘modern young ladies’ trying to secure coal-face jobs. He was outraged by the women carrying coal in baskets on their heads whom he encountered on his visit to India in 1975. As one would hope, there are a number of fascinating fragments of social history in this ...”

“... he is chiefly remembered for helping to bring down Neville Chamberlain. When, in September 1939, Arthur Greenwood, the acting Labour leader, rose to reply to Chamberlain’s ludicrously inadequate response to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, he began by saying he would speak for the Labour Party, but Amery, unable to control himself, burst out with ‘Speak ...”

“... with fanatical Huguenots who are disentombing the body of Queen Matilda. This drawing by the young Millais is currently on display in an exhibition at Tate Britain of Pre-Raphaelite works on paper (until 7 May). The calculated confusion of rigid and angular figures, although it owes something to the medieval art cherished by the nuns (some examples of ...”

“... returned to Parliament, and there was a contest for the leadership between Herbert Morrison, Arthur Greenwood and Attlee himself. On the first ballot, Attlee was only four votes ahead of Morrison, but in the second ballot he took most of Greenwood’s votes. Morrison refused to run for the Deputy Leadership, telling the Party that he was too busy on the ...”

“... For​ close to half a century, Arthur Schlesinger Jr was perhaps the most recognisable liberal intellectual in America. With his tortoiseshell glasses, bow ties, and neatly stencilled hair, he played for the literary side of Kennedy’s best and brightest, which was meant to balance out the number-crunching prowess of Robert McNamara and the Whiz Kids ...”