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“... as models. The theologian Pierre de Bérulle, consoling Henrietta Maria, then on her way to wed Charles I in the desert of Protestant England, offered Mary Magdalene as an example, maintaining that she came from a good family (as did St John before he abandoned society) and was of irreproachable character – not a prostitute at all. Both had given up the ...”

“... brilliance of an enormous circle of flames the homage of the Seneschal in golden robes before his King.’ This is fine writing of a very particular type, hardly conducive to the equable flow of narrative and producing instead the occasional, carefully judged effect of an accelerating pace which falters before the moment of vision. It is a type of writing ...”

“... fables and fairy tales. His Pinocchio begins: Once upon a time there was . . . ‘A king!’ my little readers will say at once.   No, children, you’re wrong. Once upon a time there was a piece of wood. In that sense Pinocchio has more in common with those postmodern children’s books in which nursery stories are upturned – The Stinky ...”

“... expertise around child health and development. Feeding and Care of Baby (1913) by Frederic Truby King, a New Zealand-born doctor, was reprinted several times in Britain after he visited the country in 1917. He worried about the ‘injudicious handling’ of the ‘babies of the Empire’; good habits, he said, came from the strict allowance of mother’s ...”

“... jurist who served on the Court during the country’s brief moment of independence under King Faisal in 1920. Later, he wrote a book on the French Mandate that robbed Syria of its independence. Jacques said that his family could not just walk away from all this. Things were getting better in Syria, he believed, but he feared that American ...”

“... came to Lebanon as a soldier in 1920, he tells them; his regiment advanced on Damascus to depose King Feisal. The French defeat of Feisal’s army at the Maysaloun Pass brought to an end the prospect of post-Ottoman Arab unity and independence. It also set the stage for the civil war that his listeners were then waging. ‘I took part in many other ...”

“... with an extraordinary feat of imagination. The utterances of Uriel and Madimi, of El and Il and King Carmara and scores of other spirits, are not voicings from the spirit-world, but improvised dramatic monologues performed by Kelley. Most of it is high-sounding esoteric flannel, but often the words have a strange rolling beauty: ‘I will hold up his house ...”

“... VIII, and a controversy in print with Thomas More. In May 1535, when the government of the Emperor Charles V was persecuting Protestants in the Netherlands, he was betrayed to the authorities and, despite an attempt by Thomas Cromwell to have him sent to England, executed (by strangling before his body was burned) in October 1536. Daniell, like his hero, is an ...”

“... occurred on the same day as that of the Duke of Clarence, who, had he lived, would have become King of England. Normally the passing of the next heir to the throne would attract much public attention, but it was completely eclipsed by the death of the Cardinal. After the Requiem Mass, despite the poor visibility caused by a London pea-souper, vast crowds ...”

“... completed with the addition of Landseer’s lions. The first major Wellington statue was placed, King Kong-like, atop Decimus Burton’s arch on Constitution Hill in 1846, but was so derided that it was removed in 1883 and consigned to the rustic obscurity of Aldershot’s military scrubland. A second official monument to the Iron Duke had been in the making ...”

“... heard the news that fire had destroyed Glasgow School of Art and the grove-like library which was Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterpiece. Questions soon followed: first angry ones, then ones with wider implications. Why no sprinklers? But then: why was it that Art Nouveau or Jugendstil, a global style, rooted itself in small, often submerged nations ...”

“... the Rockingham group and, after Rockingham’s death, its successor the Foxites – followers of Charles James Fox – who, with some success, tried to monopolise the Whig label. Their main opponents, the Pittites, who followed William Pitt the Younger, are often miscategorised as Tories, though they too described themselves as Whigs. The modern Conservative ...”

“... material of the novel, with the epigraphs for all its sections taken from the seventh edition of Charles Arnold-Baker’s Local Council Administration (2006). The election is important locally because of the disputed status of the Fields, a rundown area that is administratively shared with the encroaching city of Yarvil. The Fields represents the seething id ...”

“... the author of many books, including a biography of his father, Lord Carnock, a bestselling life of King George V, a life of Mrs Charles Lindbergh’s father, some novels and some historical studies. Of these works I had read only one, the pseudo-autobiographical Some People, first published in 1927 (according to the ...”

“... ruler to react to this change of location was Henry IV, who in 1400 wrote a letter to the ‘King of Abyssinia, Prester John’. The fascination with Ethiopia did not stop there, for news broke, in 1441, that an Ethiopian delegation was to attend that year’s Council of Florence. The Pope was reportedly much moved, even though the delegation turned out ...”