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“... in 1991; Lamar Cecil needed two books to capture the life, the second published in 1996. Now comes John Röhl, with the first of three projected volumes. Wilhelm himself, to whom modesty was always a mysterious idea, would doubtless have been pleased by the thought of a thousand-page doorstopper devoted to his youth. It is unlikely that he would have enjoyed ...”

“... Indian soldiers won the Victoria Cross. Many letters make the point that their loyalty was to the King personally, and express great contempt for the German Emperor, although it may well be that these are sentiments picked up from a prevailing climate of British opinion. The 127th Baluchis, whose trenches were only a few yards away from the German lines, took ...”

“... in distressed companies and undervalued shares (one of Wilbur Ross’s nicknames is ‘the King of Bankruptcy’). The shares are: £260 million W.L. Ross, £50 million Virgin Money, £50 million Abu Dhabi investment fund. You’d be forgiven for noticing that those numbers don’t come close to £747 million, so where’s the rest of the ...”

“... Then, on 24 May 1915, it declared war on Austria-Hungary. The decision was taken by the king and a minority of the cabinet, without the approval of parliament, after secret meetings in London at which the Entente powers promised that, in the event of victory, Italy would be able to annex the regions of Austria-Hungary largely populated by ...”

“... Spanish version of Le Canard Enchaîné, went as follows: the young prince Felipe asks the king, whether there will be a public holiday when Franco dies. Yes, he replies. And, papa, will there be a holiday when you are declared king? Yes, says the king. And, papa, will there be a ...”

“... dry Tobacco in’. ‘Great Iulius Commentaries lies and rots,’ the poet and waterman John Taylor wrote, ‘as good for nothing but stoppe mustard pots.’ Sir William Cornwallis kept ‘pamphlets and lying-stories and two-penny poets’ in his privy, and many texts were ‘pressed into general service’, as Margaret Spufford put it in Small ...”

“... Henry IV of England is ‘impulsive, changeable, irascible … unwilling to listen to advice’. John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy is ‘graceless, awkward and taciturn’, ‘brutal, cunning and duplicitous’, while his son, Philip the Good, is a playboy prince, given to ‘dancing, feasting, jousting, hunting and fornication’. Philip is admitted to be ...”

“... the least distaste or disaffection or complaint or clamour of his people”, and the King’s own expressed belief that the forest laws were for the benefit of his subjects as well as himself should not be read as disingenuous’. Laud’s claim to ‘have resolved in handling matters of religion to leave all gall out of my ink’ is not useful ...”

“... an hour or less for City workers, not to mention Essex men and girls. After monarchs, ranging from King John, whose hunting lodge was at Writtle, to Henry VIII, who built New Hall at Boreham (still standing), came Elizabethan lord chancellors (one is buried at Saffron Walden, another at Felsted) and Georgian lord mayors and City luminaries (too many to ...”

“... earlier, in 1611, in a decision known as the Case of Proclamations, it had been ruled that ‘the King by his proclamation or other ways cannot change any part of the common law, or statute law, or the customs of the realm … The King hath no prerogative, but that which the law of the land allows him.’ It gave a key to ...”

“... of his father, whose waiting-room was constantly crowded with supplicants for his services. As John Juxon suggests, the elder Lewis could have served as a model for the abrasive Mr Jaggers in Great Expectations, who suspended his moral judgment when dealing with his greasy, grimy riffraff of clients – cracksmen, fences, thieves – and then, in ...”

“... was ‘used by Henry and Anne, back in the day’, while others like to believe it was where the king spent ‘one of his many honeymoons’. Guests praise ‘a brilliant, authentic experience of castle life’ and the ease of finding the place, ‘especially if you use a GPS’, but some claim a lack of attention to their particular pleasures: ‘there is ...”

“... plots, Lone Ranger clichés and gushing emotions to psychological acuity of the kind you find in John le Carré, whom he’s unlikely to have read. Mai Jia has no interest in the tradition of espionage literature (in a promotional video for Penguin he mentioned only James Bond and Mission Impossible). ‘I read very little,’ he explains, ‘so I have the ...”

“... Auerbach’s, including Kermode’s ‘Introduction to the New Testament’ and his chapter on St John’s Gospel, and Alter’s Introduction to the Old Testament and his essay ‘The Characteristics of Hebrew Poetry’ – probably the best treatment of this difficult subject now available. Attention to conventions does not mean, however, that the majority ...”