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“... come to a proletarian revolution), his speech to a huge and angry demonstration in Trowbridge, Wiltshire provoked a prosecution for ‘seditious libel’ (the legal definition of a public criticism of the government). He was sent to prison for two years but released (probably because he was a solicitor) after five months. If the authorities believed that ...”

“... maggot.’ Laurence Whistler, in his biography of Rex Whistler, hastily excuses this stab from the Wiltshire queen wasp: ‘cad to her meant nothing more dishonourable than street boy, as it still did at Eton, and relates to an evening when in front of them all “with some purpose, Willy told us the whole story of his life so that we should realise that he ...”

“... the entries in Who’s Who. There are some known names: Cecil Beaton, Jasper Johns, James Jones, John Mortimer, Patricia Neal, William Styron, Andy Warhol. Among the rest are antique dealers, decorators, magazine editors, a ‘freelance music co-ordinator for fashion shows’, a princess ‘internationally concerned with matters of spiritual evolution’, an ...”

“... in some chapters glaringly so. Chapter 10 recounts a lunch party at Naipaul’s house in the Wiltshire countryside. Theroux arrives by train and is met by a car sent, as promised, by Naipaul. His gratitude is short-lived. When he reaches the house the driver, Walters, asks for £4 – quite a large sum in 1974. (The book is full of stories of Naipaul’s ...”

“... picture of the sorts of punishment meted out to new recruits by midshipmen:The Mids, as oft as John drew nearTo stare about him, seemed to sneer,For John as soon as e’er they saw,They knew was but a ‘Johnny Raw’.As Johnny sleeps on deck, his mattress is ‘lugged clean from under him’ by a neatly thrown fish-hook ...”

“... as fundamentally collaborative. Chaucer’s work wouldn’t be the same without the patronage of John of Gaunt, or John Donne’s without Robert Drury. Given the sparseness of the documentation, it is particularly instructive to consider aspects of the creation of texts that are not what we would today think of as ...”

“... reformation of morals was in any case far weaker than in Terling (Essex) or even than in Keevil (Wiltshire). The practice of spousals seems to have survived, and the prosecution of bridal pregnancy is no more than sporadic. Romford, in particular, seems to have been the sort of mobile community in which the enforcement of morals is particularly ...”

“... stay with them – but Viceroys are not exactly my line.’ In England he spent his time in rural Wiltshire and South Coast resorts. In April 1894 he was writing, ‘I do not like London,’ and in June: ‘I know very little of my own country outside London.’ In the following October he reported from Vermont: ‘I am glad to get away to sunshine and dry ...”

“... What​ have the Romans ever done for us?’ John Cleese asks in Monty Python’s Life of Brian. His audience, not realising his question is rhetorical, replies: aqueducts, sanitation, medicine, public order, etc etc. Guy de la Bédoyère, on the other hand, doesn’t need a list: the Romans’ most important legacy, he suggests in his new book, is literacy, and specifically the habit of written memorialisation ...”

“... poem associated with Rochester, ‘Upon Nothing’. One is written in the hand of his steward, John Cary, the other in a scribal hand. The second has been meticulously corrected from the first by Lady Rochester, who does not however correct the ascription of three stanzas of the poem to ‘Dux Bucks’ and three more to ‘Fleetwood Shepherd’. Harold ...”

“... status as their occupants were en route to yeoman farmer.’ He is speaking of Gomeldon in Wiltshire, but evidently wishes us to take Gomeldon for all England. It is ‘surely on their way to’ which gives the game away: Mr Platt is writing to convince himself. Needless to say, there are no pictures of peasant houses (of any kind) in the ...”

“... innocent that he was, he failed to twig that walking through the streets of Harlem with Mayor John Lindsay might be interpreted as supporting the political ambitions of a white politician in need of black votes. Rap Brown ‘lambasted me as a shallow liberal poking his nose into a world he didn’t know and in which he didn’t belong’. Brando took ...”

“... two groups. The investigation is mainly concentrated on the three western counties of Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset, but supporting examples are drawn from the whole country. It is possible to imagine the tension in 1619 when the town oligarchy of Stratford on Avon tried to cut down a maypole, and were told they had ‘set all the town together by the ...”

“... hagiographies, and the starting point for all modern treatments, was written by the antiquarian John Aubrey towards the end of Hobbes’s long and eventful life (1588-1679). This became the fullest of the pen-portraits which make up Brief Lives, and from Aubrey we learn that Hobbes was, in many respects, a quintessential product of the age. He grew up in ...”

“... a hundred years before Parliament paid out about five times that amount to the ‘lone genius’ John Harrison in 1773 for the magnificent marine chronometer that provided a working solution to the longitude problem. The patent Hooke wanted was a type of ‘Letters Patent’ – literally ‘open letters’, sealed but not sealed up, conferring the special ...”