Search Results

“... next book, A Palace for a King (1980), written in collaboration with a ‘plain’ historian, John Elliott, studied the court of Philip IV and the building of the Palace of the Buen Retiro on the outskirts of Madrid. Behind the enterprise loomed the massive figure of Philip’s first minister, the Count-Duke of Olivares. Olivares took it seriously enough ...”

“... its first 48 years, a period of dominance interrupted only by the single-term administrations of John Adams and his son John Quincy. Conversely, 24 years after Andrew Jackson of Tennessee left the White House in 1837, the next generation of Southerners led 11 states out of the Union, founding a Southern Confederacy to ...”

“... wasn’t in any case very enthusiastic about Nicholson’s work at that stage). But John Piper, who had tried his hand at pure abstraction, had by now turned to topography and was therefore recruited; and when Clark was shown Moore’s first shelter drawings, he was able to say that there was no reason now for Moore to fight shy of being a war ...”

“... incunabula and rare folios, immaculately printed on large paper, bound by Jean Grolier and other masters of the book arts. They preferred unique items, though they often had to settle for the very rare.Lamb had loved his books, and the hunt for them, as much as any of those grandees. In his informal, allusive, often nostalgic Essays and Last Essays of ...”

“... voters in 1945; or a better comparison might be with the United States in 1960, when the dazzling John F. Kennedy seemed to represent the beginning of a new age after what his supporters saw as the suffocating and mediocre years of President Eisenhower. The under-forties in particular, in Australia in 1972 as in the United States in 1960, suddenly felt ...”

“... exercises in persuasion, adjust his convictions, and perhaps distort them, to tactical ends. John Aubrey, a friend, wrote that Marvell was ‘of very few words’, and that though he stoked his muse with wine he was careful not to give himself away by drinking in company. Yet he had a violent temper which got him into humiliating trouble in the Commons ...”

“... to accepting aid from the Soviet Bloc – which can hardly have endeared him to Kenya’s colonial masters. It was perhaps in recognition of his own deficiencies – along with a desire to upset the rise of Mboya – that Odinga was the first to break the unspoken taboo that had prohibited any mention of Kenyatta and his political influence. During a Legco ...”

“... youthful delinquency but knowing that they would one day be sworn in as respectable tradesmen and masters. Maus, however, goes further, contending that Hal has all the cake and eats it: ‘the advantages of land and the advantages of chattels, the advantages of being an elder son and the advantages of being a younger son, the advantages of being a father and ...”

“... How bad was it? In a way it was worse than a defeat, because to be defeated, an army and its masters must understand the nature of the conflict they are fighting. Britain never did understand, and now we would rather not think about it. The troops are home from a campaign that lasted 13 years, including Iraq in the middle. They are coming home from their ...”

“... taking meals on his own at irregular hours, and napping at his desk when he was tired. His masters might get exasperated with his serene self-absorption, but he continued to bring credit to the house through his reputation as a philosophical virtuoso, and they still valued his opinions and took pleasure in having him at their elbow as a personal ...”

“... Two days filming my TV parables programme Heavenly Stories at Dulwich College, the setting the Masters’ Library, a galleried, High Victorian room adjoining the school hall, presumably where the masters foregather before assembly. Over the chimneypiece are two crude allegorical panels of Piety and Liberality, the ideals ...”

“... intellectuals included some famous names: Bryce, Courtney, Freeman, Lecky, Lowe, J.S. Mill, John Morley. A nervous concern about the consequences of mass franchise, worries about the concessionary mood of the Liberal leaders – especially in the face of violence in Ireland – led many Late Victorian Liberal intellectuals to drift rightwards toward ...”

“... teens, C.R.W. Nevinson fancied the life of a bohemian and attention-grabber. His idol was Augustus John, king of the Café Royal, and, in 1908, he decided to go to the Slade, as John had done. There he knocked around with Stanley Spencer, Mark Gertler and Edward Wadsworth in the Slade Coster Gang. They went to music ...”

“... or the shifting frontier between mysticism and science; nor can he do more than advert to John Bossy’s theory that Bruno was spying for Walsingham. If he was, Nicholl argues, it did not help his notions gain currency; Walsingham was interested in the man and his links with the French Embassy, not in Bruno’s wider message. Nicholl suggests that it ...”

“... the best example of this is the investigation carried out by Manchester Deputy Chief Constable, John Stalker, into an alleged ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy in Northern Ireland. In January 1988, the then Attorney-General, Sir Patrick Mayhew, told the Commons that, given certain ‘considerations of national security’, no charges would be brought against eight ...”