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“... He hunted down giants for Monitor – Henry Moore, Sir Thomas Beecham, E.M. Forster, Max Ernst, Robert Graves. He had the fine, if expensive idea of filming the artist or administrator in a setting germane to his or her work. They went to Athens to profile Katina Paxinou, to the Metropolitan Opera in New York to observe Rudolf Bing in the post that had been ...”

“... We may have forgotten the work of his youth, the two post-war novels based on his experience of service with the German Army in Russia. The 22 stories in The Casualty were written in the immediately post-war period, 1946 to 1952, so that they are ‘old’ stories, but satisfyingly youthful, physically aware of particulars, not seeking ...”

“... MP for Morpeth, Will Owen, was charged with being an agent of the StB, Czechoslovakia’s secret service. The man who had named him was Josef Frolik, a Czechoslovak defector, who said Owen was on a £500 monthly retainer organised by Robert Husak, another intelligence officer at the Czechoslovak embassy in ...”

“... forces of the recently deposed James II surrounded the largely Protestant city. Its governor, Robert Lundy, wanted to negotiate surrender as they didn’t have the resources to withstand a prolonged siege. But thirteen apprentice boys defied him and closed the gates. Lundy was banished, replaced by a stauncher man. The siege lasted 105 days. Derry’s ...”

“... Crimp? What is the British Army like today? Dennis Barker has been given the freedom of the service, at home and abroad, but instead of beginning at the beginning (recruitment of officers and men) and taking us through selection, training, service and philosophy, he has employed all the artistry of a provincial ...”

“... George Herbert, Thomas Ken, Watts, Charles Wesley – but many less celebrated names, such as Sir Robert Grant, William Walsham How, William Chatterton Dix: Grant (‘O worship the King, all glorious above’), the Scottish-born English MP who ended his life as Governor of Bombay; Thomas Olivers (‘The God of Abraham praise’), a cobbler who was converted ...”

“... superhumanly competent and diligent, and it was no surprise when he passed top into the Civil Service after the war. In his attitude to the British people, he reminds me more of the Efficient Baxter vainly attempting to sort out Lord Emsworth’s affairs. Nor was he lacking courage. As an undergraduate, he visited the battlefront of the Spanish Civil War ...”

“... to eat dirty Lapp food, inquiring always about prices, land tenure and the system of military service. He also showed his limitations as an economist in the failure to relate recent improvements in Norwegian agriculture to a rise in population. Here the same careful and sympathetic work lets us see the Malthus family, part of the middling ranks of ...”

“... who went on to become Henry VIII’s great minister. Morgan’s son Richard entered his uncle’s service and changed his name to Cromwell in 1529. (Occasionally Oliver referred to himself as ‘Cromwell alias Williams’ – even on his funeral effigy he is described as ‘Of the name Williams, of Glamorgan, and by King Henry VIII changed into ...”

“... ingloriously surviving deregulation by means of cut-throat fare wars, extremes of cost-cutting (service standards compete with those of Aeroflot at its mythic worst), abrupt shifts from expansion to contraction, repeated transits through Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and by what hurts Boeing: sudden cancellations of options or even firm orders for its ...”

“... been something personal. Field notes Malory’s good luck in having a rich Crusader uncle in Sir Robert Malory, prior of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, who led an English contingent against the Turks, 1435-8; but also his bad luck in having Uncle Robert die in 1440, before his nephew could profit from any ...”

“... his teeth on edge. Although he spent his whole life teaching in universities – apart from war service, a year on the Nation and a stint as poetry consultant at the Library of Congress – he repeatedly let it be known that he did not belong on campus. In his letters from academia, he casts himself as a highly superior misfit, and his wearyingly witty ...”

“... David Starkey found no occasion even to mention Cromwell’s name.* Now, with the publication of Robert Hutchinson’s biography of Cromwell, it is as if Beria has come back to haunt us, requiring a further revision of the Encyclopedia. And the analogy is not so far-fetched, since Hutchinson tells us that Cromwell was responsible for transforming the England ...”

“... from New South Wales, both came to a speedy end: one died and the other was shot by a gamekeeper. Robert Cecil is said to have given his parakeet claret. A zebra brought from Ethiopia by the East India Company in 1826 was allowed to make frequent visits to the canteen of the Royal Menagerie to drink ale, of which it was reported to be ‘exceedingly ...”

“... echoes, would the Administrative Reform Association’s anxiety to bring the standards of public service up to those of private business mean? The answers to such questions, he shows, were often indistinct, partly because the problems were intrinsically complicated, partly because it was hardly likely that any solution would commend itself to all strands of ...”