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“... the glory of Venice. Being available as a print, it could spread the message across the world. Henry VIII had a copy. A detail from William Frazer’s 1804 copy of Fra Mauro’s 1448 world map Great maps are serious undertakings. It took de’ Barbari three years to piece together and engrave his aerial view from individual drawings and sketches. The ...”

“... windows. The plainness of the building, standing opposite the Time-Life office, with its Henry Moore figures in a frieze against the sky, doesn’t help. A little further along, the entrance to Sotheby’s is adorned with the oldest outdoor sculpture in London: a 3000-year-old black basalt effigy of Sekhmet, the lion goddess, which was sold for £40 ...”

“... of delicacy and miniaturism. Many of them are also ravishingly beautiful, from a simple green teapot, not previously exhibited, which had hardened curators sighing with delight at the press view, to a much reproduced if hardly ever seen set of paintings of 12 courtly beauties passing the time in various states of nervy languor. But even the huge ...”

“... into what Walpole, wilfully misquoting Pope, referred to as a Gothic Vatican. The house acquired a Green Closet, an armoury, a Holbein Chamber and the Tribune, a jewel-like space, top-lit through stained glass, with ‘the air of a Catholic Chapel’. Walpole described the effect he was aiming for as ‘gloomth’. If the house was strange, the contents were ...”

“... In​ ‘The Wizard of Oz: A Parable on Populism’ (1964), Henry Littlefield, a high-school teacher, interpreted L. Frank Baum’s novel as an extended metaphor for American politics in the 1890s. He argued that Baum, who in 1888 moved to the territory that became South Dakota, sympathised with the plight of the region’s farmers and was influenced by the views of a man he sang with in a barbershop quartet, who later became a senator for the Populist Party ...”

“... barely walk unaided, never mind stroll up to a man and shoot him. The two cops were shot at by Henry Methvin, a drunken con, and finished off by Clyde, as Bonnie sat in the Ford cuddling Sonny Boy. The photos that shocked the public were not in themselves so unusual. In the miserable Dallas slums they both grew up in, one of the few affordable ways for ...”

“... at the Connaught for John Gielgud’s 90th birthday given by Alec Guinness. John G. in an olive-green corduroy suit, elbows pressed firmly into his sides, hands clasped over his tummy, smiling and giggling and bubbling over with things to say and (except for a small fading of the voice) no different from when I first met him twenty-five years ago. Dame Judi ...”

“... protested, and the consequence was the presumably unique disclaimer in the Epilogue to 2 Henry IV. The decision to do away with Falstaff is characteristic of a certain archaeological rigour in the editors’ procedures. Of course they are right to say that if we use their work we must live with their decisions, but it may simply be too late for most ...”

“... painted books, ancient chants, plaster statues’, with too much downtime for hunting, cards and green chartreuse. They live in denial until the rising body count forces the abbot to concede: ‘It’s all over … Our life here. The monastic life in England.’ Puzzles and deaths drift up like the snow that eventually transforms Scarnsea into a locked-room ...”

“... with my stepson-in-law on a halcyon day like this. As I take the hose out I see it’s blue, not green. I’ve filled my car brim-full with £44 worth of diesel. Two hours of frenzied thinking, rethinking, conferring with mechanics, phoning the AA, being towed to a garage at Tarbet on Loch Lomond, transferring luggage, boots, rucksack, camera and crates of ...”

“... broke off the affair. Now, many months later, Bendrix bumps into Sarah’s husband on the Common. Henry Miles confides that he has doubts about Sarah’s fidelity, and has considered employing a private detective to follow her; Bendrix is inspired to have her watched himself. Parkis, the diligently incompetent investigator he hires, gets hold of Sarah’s ...”

“... and sex, is in one sense a cerebral rather than a visceral experience. If the asparagus is bright green and looks good, then it is so: at least for most eaters. Restaurants work on this basis, making choice, description and context all important: the grub as grub would probably be far better at home, but the mind wants a change. In several of Ian Fleming’s ...”

“... the tears of Desdemona, and the outrageousness and ingratitude of Prince George as Prince Hal. Henry Crawford in Mansfield Park remarks that ‘one gets acquainted with Shakespeare without knowing how. It is a part of an Englishman’s constitution.’ Shakespeare was certainly very much there in spirit, partly due to the acting of Kean and Mrs ...”

“... by settlement in two distinct zones, one mainly Celtic – behind those mountains, and on the Green Isle to the west – the other exclusively Germanic. Thus, Norman Davies writes, ‘the conditions had been created where England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales could begin the initial and most tentative phase of their crystallisation.’ The Isles’ deep ...”

“... not appear so at the time. Francis Galton, at least, was so struck by the report that he wrote to Henry Sidgwick (the philosopher and Eleanor’s husband, widely believed, ironically, to be impotent – at least they had no children) suggesting a scheme for getting more of these eugenically sound young women into the breeding stock: ‘I heartily wish it were ...”