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“... In her first line, Antonia Fraser describes her book as ‘a labour of love’. Given her somewhat romantic view of Charles II’s many affairs of the heart and her warm sympathy for the King, it is a doubly apt admission. The book is much more, however, than an account written around the royal harem. It is a portrait drawn from the absorption of many sources ...”

“... The Shell Guide to the History of London might be more accurately described as the shell of a historical guide to selected architecture and works of art in London. The terms involved in such titles have long been subject to a process of inflation, as have the volumes themselves. For nearly three centuries there have been innumerable combinations of the words ‘guide’, ‘history’ and ‘London’ together with a great variety of adjectives, each product being claimed by publisher and author alike as the indispensable vade-mecum, mentor or companion for visitors to the metropolis or students of its history ...”

“... The ‘major reinterpretation’ of City and Crown politics, promised by Professor Ashton in his book on the English Civil Wars, and long awaited, has now been published in a slim volume covering the years from 1603 to the outbreak of the Civil War. Put briefly, his theme runs thus. The city fathers, defenders of monarchy, not Parliament, under James I, and again allied to the Crown from the autumn of 1641, were nevertheless temporarily ‘alienated’ from their natural ally during the 1630s ...”

“... Dr Palliser’s The Age of Elizabeth is the latest volume in a series which seeks to relate English and British economic and social history from the Anglo-Saxons to the Welfare State. Its initial and terminal dates as given in the title appear to follow a publisher’s or general editor’s dictum under which successive volumes will start to cover the precise date on which a previous author closed his account ...”

“... has written much about him. Instead, the only essay in social history – a fascinating piece by Valerie Pearl on ‘Social Policy in Early Modern London’. Kevin Sharpe on Archbishop Laud and the University of Oxford is much in Trevor-Roper’s spirit. I greatly enjoyed David S. Katz on the problem, much debated in 17th century England, of what ...”

“... something to adorn the walls, and perhaps this is what inspired the college’s then president, Valerie Pearl, to write to a hundred leading woman artists in 1992 asking if they’d be willing to donate works to the college on the condition they’d be kept on permanent display. Three-quarters of them came up with the goods, starting off a collection ...”

“... in the Civil War has been familiar enough in outline to historians since the pioneering work of Valerie Pearl, the effect of Brenner’s work is to make it clear that the full extent of its contribution to the English Revolution has not been registered. At the same time, the blazing light in which they emerge from Brenner’s treatment only deepens the ...”

“... of Technology. ‘Traditionally most designers did not think of archiving their careers,’ Valerie Steele, the curator (and editor of Fashion Theory), points out. ‘Only very recently have they become aware that to establish their place in history, they need a material record of their work.’ Without a cadre of scholarly customers, the archives may ...”

“... resolve under fire. To many Americans, Jan Struther simply was Mrs Miniver. According to Valerie Grove, in her introduction to the new edition, President Roosevelt told Jan that Mrs Miniver had considerably hastened American entry into the war. No evidence is cited for this statement, possibly made when Struther stayed at the White House in June ...”

“... has unearthed a great deal of shark history and trivia, from Pliny’s description of attacks on pearl divers, to accounts of Hawaiian kings ordering gladiators to fight sharks to the death in watery arenas, to Churchill’s wartime stance: ‘The British government is entirely opposed to sharks.’ Her basic line – one shared by most shark experts – is ...”

“... the press on his behalf, emits a pleasant porridge of upper-media demotic. Another close adviser, Valerie Jarrett, a Chicago friend, is a technocrat to the bone, genially officious but lacking in any pith and point. These people are no match for Cheney, or for the president’s antagonists in the substitute media who speak under no restraint. What Cheney and ...”