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“... from upstart crow into national bard; there were theoreticians of ‘original composition’ like Edward Young, who set a premium on the rejection of classical models; there were book-trade entrepreneurs whose huge poetry anthologies cashed in on the landmark case of Donaldson v. Becket, which more or less destroyed copyright law; there were the ...”

“... persona of his later years – the early nights, the carpet slippers, and so on. Old when young and young when old: the ageing of our most-wrinkled-ever poet has always seemed a somewhat mysterious process.Most people who knew Auden when he really was ‘the youngest person present’ were struck by his air of being ...”

“... Heart of Darkness. A distinguished journalist, and one of the finest travel writers around, Gavin Young has now made his contribution to Conradiana by following the man’s footsteps in the South China, Java and Banda Seas. Young visits Bangkok, Singapore and Jakarta, but especially winds his way around ...”

“... that Jonathan Hughes situates his study of the Duke of York’s charismatic eldest son, Edward IV. Edward has always received a mixed historiographical press. Contemporaries recognised and celebrated his energy, intelligence and good fortune, but gave due weight as well to his periodic indolence and mounting ...”

“... of elegant writing, like a dream sequence. It is an unpublished piece written by Davie as a very young Observer reporter. It incorporates Raymond, Beaverbrook’s camp valet who would stamp his foot and say, ‘Oh, we are being difficult today, Lord!’, the current mistress, Marie-Edmée Escarra, later dismissed for drink, and a lethargic, affable, fat Lord ...”

“... Edward Stobart owns the largest independent haulage firm in Britain. A stammering farm child who hated school and left without paper qualifications, he worked all hours to set up his company, spending the weekends obsessively cleaning his lorries. A typical Saturday night out would be to somewhere ‘like Beattock, eating egg and chips in a transport caff, having tipped a load at Motherwell ...”

“... was at this inn, on the evening of 3 May 1591, that the English alchemist, clairvoyant and con-man Edward Kelley was arrested by officers of Emperor Rudolf II. At the time of his arrest Kelley was an internationally famous figure, but thereafter the story grows confused: he disappears from view into the dungeons of 16th-century Bohemia. News of his death ...”

“... life at that time than in a desire to say anything about the war. The book tells the story of Edward Haggard, a young hospital doctor, training to be a surgeon, who falls in love with the wife of the hospital’s senior pathologist. There are many excellent characters (Cushing, for example, the flinty senior surgeon who ...”

“... most able classical scholar of a Westminster generation which included the imperfectly educated Edward Gibbon, who would later prove sympathetic to the public plight of an exschoolfellow. It was also classically-educated administrators, rather more than the last Viceroy (an inept naval cadet), who would eventually oversee the immediately post-colonial ...”

“... are a burden on us, not the other way about, and b. that the chief difficulty at every stage of Edward VIII’s life lay in the finding and invention of things for him to do. The same principle – of pointless duties joylessly undertaken – underlay his very conception. Prince Albert Victor, theoretical heir to the heir to the throne in the 1890s, appears ...”

“... Am I eccentric?’ Edward James once asked me in the days before I was added to his long list of enemies both real and imaginary. ‘I suppose I am, but I don’t mean to be. I’ve always tried to behave like everyone else.’ We were sitting on the platform of one of the inevitably incomplete concrete follies he was building at enormous expense on a hillside he owned by proxy in a Mexican jungle ...”

“... VIII’s work of remodelling cathedrals and creating some from scratch. If his successor and son Edward VI had lived, they might have suffered the fate of cathedrals in Scotland, and been ruined or turned into parish churches, their bishops eventually dispersed or rendered powerless. But Edward died ...”

“... first star was the Lebanese-born Badia Massabni, also an actress, cabaret-owner and trainer of young talent. Badia’s career as a dancer ended around World War Two, but her true heir and disciple was Tahia Carioca, who was, I think, the finest belly-dancer ever. Now 75 and living in Cairo, she is still active as an actress and political ...”

“... seems to have continued for a while, but Catherine eventually gave in. The wedding was quiet. ‘Young, girlish’ Catherine was a modest bride. A guest remarked that she was ‘bright, pleasant … dressed in the simplest and neatest manner, and looked better perhaps than if she had been enabled to aim at something more’. Catherine is an early version of ...”

“... Arthur Benson​ never stopped dreaming about his father. Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury, dropped dead saying the Confession in 1896 – he sank onto his prayer cushion and didn’t get up again – but nearly twenty years later his son found him crouched in the cupboard under the stairs, dressed in his purple cassock and playing with some toys: ‘Papa … giggled; then he said: “But now that you have found me out, you must run down here as often as you can, and we will have a good game at something – You don’t know what fun it is ...”