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“... the Axis turned into a crusade to ‘roll back’ communism in Eastern Europe and Asia. One was Frank Wisner, a corporate lawyer who enlisted to work in naval intelligence early in 1941. When the US entered the war he was consigned to the tedium of the navy’s cable and censorship office in New York. Donovan rescued him from that backwater at the end of ...”

“... in the 19th century: but for most people in England Scottish history means Mary and Prince Charles Edward, whose deaths, one of which was directly caused by England, are associated with ’87 and ’88. This setting in time is unfair on those of us who try to show that Scottish society had its own interesting line of development, a topic which neither ...”

“... case. Foote’s theatrical career began under the tutelage of the veteran Irish actor and director Charles Macklin. Somewhat improbably, his first outing, in early 1744, was in the role of Othello. This was received well enough but his more notable success, first in London and then in Dublin, was as Lord Foppington in Vanbrugh’s The Relapse. Other repertory ...”

“... Sobers, who? Some Australians who grew up when I did argue with some force for Keith Miller. As Frank Keating’s book proves, however, Miller can quickly be rejected for second place. It goes, unquestionably, to Ian Botham. Indeed in one crucial respect, Botham beats even the great Sobers himself. Only 22 times in over a thousand Test matches has a player ...”

“... in the garden with some of the older children. In Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens, Robert Gottlieb quotes the letter in which Dickens explains to his wife what happened: ‘Presently, we heard them come back and say to each other with some alarm: “Why, the gate’s shut, and they are all gone!” Ally began in a dismayed way ...”

“... had been at sea for nearly four years, and, as he wrote to his Cambridge mentor, John Henslow, Charles Darwin was increasingly anxious to get home: ‘I look forward with joy and interest to [visiting the Galapagos], both as being somewhat nearer to England, & for the sake of having a good look at an active Volcano.’ He had cause to expect some ...”

“... for him.When I first met William Feaver, I had recently had a baby: Lucian’s and my son, Frank Paul, whom I had left with my mother. My mother was Frank’s main carer during his babyhood and early childhood. I left him with her so that I could continue to paint, and so that I could continue to sit for ...”

“... of psychic instability. Edward entered a home for the insane at 19 and died there 60 years later, Charles went in for opium, Arthur for alcohol. Septimus would introduce himself to a stranger by rising from the hearthrug where he had been lying, extending a languid hand, and saying: ‘I am Septimus, the most morbid of the Tennysons.’ The daughters were ...”

“... long and successful struggle against the opposing forces of evil. He explained to his editor, Charles Monteith, that Matty in Darkness Visible was meant to be a saint, like Simon and the curé d’Ars and St Thérèse of Lisieux. ‘It’s a figure I’ve tried for again and again and I suppose Matty in Darkness Visible is as near as I shall ever ...”

“... a blood type, a paper size, a record side and a social class (though this last usage dates from Charles Booth’s Labour and Life of the People of 1889, a moment too late for Murray and his readers), plus a whole string of modern abbreviations and acronyms (a word first recorded in America in 1943). Nine columns pass before we hit a as indefinite article ...”

“... The failure of the Council’s literature policies cannot be attributed to popular opinion. Since Charles Osborne was for a long time the director of the Literature Department, we might expect to find the true explanation of its demise in his memoirs, the first fruits of his leisure in early retirement.† There is an odd devil in Mr Osborne which is always ...”

“... In late​ 1555 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and head of the house of Habsburg, returned to the Low Countries, where he was born: there, he began the long, slow process by which he abdicated in favour of his son Philip and brother Ferdinand. It was abundantly clear why such a transfer of power was necessary. It was a cold winter and Charles, white-haired, with shrunken gums exposing blackened teeth, his joints so crippled by gout that he was unable to sign documents with his bandaged hands, was exhausted, infirm and, in his mid-fifties, prematurely aged ...”

“... as he says it is. He is treading geographically but not methodologically in the footsteps of Charles Booth. His aim is to convey to his readers as vividly as he can just how awful are the lives of the poor and powerless inhabitants of the inner cities of a supposedly civilised nation which ought to be a great deal more ashamed of allowing such conditions ...”

“... stayed on at Gad’s Hill. News of the others – Charley at Baring’s, Walter out in India, Frank trying to learn German in Hamburg, Sydney being accepted for the Navy, Alfred and Henry at various schools – is relayed in a style sometimes more cheery than convincing. Dickens’s treatment of his boys has been thought dictatorial, but the letters ...”

“... Smith, sometimes he was Stewart, and sometimes he was Preston, but the most telling of the aliases Charles Stewart Parnell used to conduct the liaison with Mrs O’shea that eventually destroyed him was undoubtedly ‘Mr Fox’. Revealed by the divorce proceedings of November 1890, which, in wrecking his alliance with Gladstonian Liberalism, cost him his ...”