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“... which began in the 1890s, peaked between 1910 and 1920, and continued intermittently until her death in 1927, at the age of 50. In those days film was in its infancy and still silent (The Jazz Singer was released the year Duncan died). Because music – Chopin, Schubert, Brahms, Beethoven, Wagner – was the spiritual inspiration for so much of what she ...”

“... a lifelong romance with oneself. Pratt began a journal in 1925 and carried on writing until her death in 1986. She imagines her public from the start. ‘Reader please be kind to me!’ she writes winningly: ‘I am only 16 at present, and just realising life and beginning to think for myself. It’s all very thrilling in its strange newness.’ Jean wants ...”

“... logic of its not fitting any other category. It is rich in hints about the place, or non-place, of death in our lives. People used to die, now they have end-of-life issues. The single person to have contributed most to this change is Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the author of On Death and Dying and On Grief and Grieving, who came ...”

“... emphasising instead the brisker perspectives represented by Henry Fielding. Henry’s sister Sarah, whose novel The Adventures of David Simple is examined in detail here, demonstrates the power of the vision of sensibility which culminated in Richardson’s Clarissa. It was a double-edged rule, bound up with the perverse gratifications of misery. Virtue ...”

“... elements in Italy and Japan, the mass murder of the Left in Indonesia and the deployment of death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala, to say nothing of its open collusion with the Mafia and the narco-underworld in the United States itself, I don’t know that journalistic association with it (of the kind undertaken by Sir Peregrine Worsthorne) would be ...”

“... happen, we are all tempted to think like this, and to build the idea into our approach to personal death and disaster. The alarms and responsibilities of public life make it even more seductive. The suggestion that, in order to produce real security, we might have to admit that we lie open to appalling dangers brought about by our own systematic confusion and ...”

“... Taylor taking photographs of snails copulating, and Alan Taylor – who since John Betjeman’s death has styled himself ‘the nation’s Parkinsonist’ – lying on the floor recovering from delirium. The diarist comments: ‘Cynthia just did not know what to say: snail sexuality in the garden, delirious dreams – and from outside, the house looked like ...”

“... party over the cuts, the refusal of any Lib Dem minister to resign in protest (not even Sarah Teather, who managed to absent herself from several votes over cuts to welfare benefits), suggests that the differences between the parties are slighter than both insist. Most Lib Dem activists don’t think of themselves as slightly leftwing Tories; the ...”

“... was a source of weakness, ill-health, mental debility, sexual and reproductive problems and even death, from which women were freed in the early 20th century by feminism and modern styles of dress. In E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime, the down-to-earth free spirit Emma Goldman gently removes the corset of the famous society beauty Evelyn Nesbit, gives her a ...”

“... effect of which is to leave an overriding impression of eccentricity and bad temper. We meet Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, lamenting her ‘misfortune to suffer very great mischiefs from the assistance of architects’; Sir John Cope, of Bramshill, whose ‘apartments are so vastly spacious that one generally sees Sir John toward the winter put on his ...”

“... security. After the July Revolution, which the Ordinances provoked, he was sentenced to ‘civil death’, so that when Edmond was born four years later, his birth certificate listed the father as ‘The prince called Marquis de Chalançon, currently travelling’.The third member of the party was described by Sargent in his letter to James as ‘the unique ...”

“... plant, they will remain for the duration what they already are. They constitute the stuff of death rather than the stuff of life. Narrative keeps fresh the capacity for memory and desire which, in turn, freshens narrative. What is kept fresh by the description of bits and pieces of clothing, or kept sour by it, is something else ...”

“... lost out in an architectural competition to a design by the young Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Sarah Guppy. Telford’s bridge was to be of iron, supported on two slender Gothic towers, standing on each river-edge. There is something intriguingly ungrammatical about them, severely perpendicular in style and at the same time resolutely modern. The towers ...”

“... His leg was sawn off without anaesthetic. A few days later, he suffered another blow: the death of his infant son, Richard. Although the wound healed well, the recovery would have been gruelling. All the while, the invoices and orders kept piling up. At the time of his surgery, Wedgwood styled himself ‘Potter to Her Majesty’ Queen Charlotte and ...”

“... Ordnance, producing reliable maps for use in the subjugation of the Highlands. By the time of his death, his astonishing industry had earned him many years of genteel prosperity, selling his original drawings and paintings, publishing collections of his prints, taking on private pupils, and teaching at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. But in the last ...”