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“... instance, I was reassured to find myself not alone in feeling like this. On the death of Crabbe Lord Melbourne wrote: ‘I am always glad when one of those fellows dies for then I know I have the whole of him on my shelf.’ Which is, of course, the cue for biography.This is the fifth play on which Nicholas Hytner and I have collaborated, not counting two ...”

“... called themselves ‘the godly’ or ‘the true church’, but not ‘the unspotted lambs of the Lord’ as the Elizabethan chronicler John Stow claimed (this was another slur: Stow had Catholic sympathies).Puritanism has long commanded historical attention. Collinson helped put the politics back in, working with the grain of the ‘new’ social and ...”

“... the corner in Age Concern.15 September. Much missed these shameful days is Tom Bingham, the ex-lord chief justice and legal philosopher, who would have had Johnson scuttling for cover. Both from Balliol, one a credit to the college, the other not. I don’t relish the dilemma of the fellows of Balliol when they are called on to dole out the prime ...”

“... and saw himself as ‘a spirit that was once a man’. The white pyramid depicted by Hablot Browne in his engraving of the churchyard is beyond our reach. The author of sensationalist ‘yellow peril’ fictions, Sax Rohmer, had a particular interest in this pyramid. It was known to his evil genius, Fu Manchu, with his fiendish plots and intimacy with ...”

“... absurdity – of the procedure itself. The most relevant words in this connection were written by Lord Scarman in the Introduction to his Report on the 1981 Brixton Disorders: ‘I recommend a far-reaching reform of the system for investigating complaints against the Police ... What is needed is a system of independent investigation: in other words, the ...”

“... in mummy’ by the Egyptian sorceress who sewed it. The remedy was in such request that Sir Thomas Browne was driven to complain that ‘Mummie is become Merchandise. Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsoms.’ Given its astonishing range of supposed benefits, it is hardly surprising that, by the middle of the 16th century, demand for this exotic ...”

“... and the most precious is that which is most freely proffered.’ It was Churchill who, as First Lord of the Admiralty, had formed the Royal Naval Division, secured Brooke a place in it and sent it east, in the hope of helping Russia by taking Constantinople and opening up the Black Sea. In the weeks after Brooke’s death landings were finally made on the ...”

“... as good as advertisements cracked them up to be. 7 April. After filming An Englishman Abroad Coral Browne gave the extravagant fur coat she wore in the film to the National Theatre, partly for sentimental reasons but partly, too, because times were changing and it was getting almost unwearable. Hoping to be able to use it in their current production the West ...”

“... my mother’s partner. He took the bus to Newbury in full dress uniform, with highly polished Sam Browne belt (the polishing done by Gunner Tench, his batman), riding boots and spurs – he removed the spurs for ‘the dancing’ to avoid inflicting serious injuries around the floor.The event, as he wrote more than fifty years later, was his introduction to a ...”

“... Row, hope to bump into no one between here and the bank, especially not Gerald Dawe or Vincent Browne, who both have offices there. Nothing against them really, but it’s mid-December, no time for meeting anyone. Pass by Sweney’s Chemist. Lemon soap. Viagra nowadays, Bloom would buy. Lemon Viagra. Mr Beamish the old bank manager gone now, gave me money ...”

“... a kind of garage with rusty stuff piled all around – shell casings, barbed wire, rotting Sam Browne belts, a pair of ludicrous French shop-dummies, gaily attired in mismatched officers’ uniforms. Then on out to the display trenches, snaking off into the woods behind the building. These had a neat, generic, recently packed-down aspect, the corrugated ...”