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“... sexual follies dry up, though he plainly kept an obsessive eye on his male peers’ success rates. Nicholas Tomalin scores highly among ‘well-connected and beautifully constructed young women’, but in the end it’s a straight-up contest between Martin Amis (‘He only had to stand there and he was in like Flynn’) and Ian Hamilton (who ‘never had to do ...”

“... one fact which makes the case worth pursuing is the involvement of Shakespeare’s former landlord Christopher Mountjoy. There is an obvious link: like the three goldworkers, Mountjoy was French. Also like them, he lived in the Cripplegate area (though his house was within the London city walls, on respectable Silver Street, whereas the alleged fornicators ...”

“... On​ 13 May 1397, the visitors came to Ruardean in Gloucestershire. They learned that Nicholas Cuthler was causing a scandal among his neighbours. He had not come to terms with his father’s death and was making strange claims: he went about in public saying that his father’s spirit still walked the village at night ...”

“... On 18 May 1593 a warrant was issued to ‘apprehend’ Christopher Marlowe, and on 20 May he was brought before the Privy Council for questioning. He was not detained, but was ordered to report to the Council daily until ‘licensed to the contrary’. This state of precarious liberty lasted only until 30 May, when he was fatally stabbed by a man named Ingram Frizer, though whether his sudden death was a matter of coincidence or conspiracy remains unresolved ...”

“... of Philby’s funeral in Moscow:In London, Philby’s old comrade from the days of War Station XB, Nicholas Elliott, was in his club at St James’s at about this time, giving thought to a scheme to disrupt any attempt by the KGB leadership to iconise Philby posthumously, as indeed was their intention. The idea that formed in Elliott’s mind was that the ...”

“... his lap. Although de Pury modestly concedes that it would be an exaggeration to compare him to Christopher Columbus, he does want us to believe that he is a great explorer. He claims to have spotted Richter when he was still an ‘emerging’ artist. He hasn’t the slightest doubt that ‘contemporary art’ is ‘the New Old Masters’. When, in ...”

“... Jacopo della Quercia was one of the great sculptors of the early 15th century, comparable in stature with his contemporaries Donatello and Ghiberti, but his work is less consistent, and more difficult to discuss in the stylistic terms usually associated with Renaissance art. There are three famous works by Jacopo: the tomb of Ilaria del Caretto in Lucca, the doorway of San Petronio in Bologna and the reliefs and statues of the Fonte Gaia, the municipal fountain that originally stood opposite the town hall in Siena ...”

“... has suffered an alteration, and the architect of these Baroque edifices turns out to be one Nicholas Dyer – with a career as Wren’s protégé but a life-history significantly different from the real Hawksmoor’s. Here Superintendent Hawksmoor turns out to be a senior detective based on (new) New Scotland Yard, where his predecessor had worked from ...”

“... It was an unprecedented achievement. In his exciting but frustrating book on early Modernism, Christopher Butler discusses the Delaunay-Cendrars work in some detail, with-in the context of simultaneism, but does not mention either Duncan Grant or Vanessa Bell at any point (although her husband Clive, a critic rather than an artist, is respectfully ...”

“... to the LRB could work the same trick on Karl Miller, who for this anthology hands over to Nicholas Spice, who in turn sensibly makes sure that Karl Miller’s long essay about the LRB heads the list of contents. This essay is to be relished, not least when it is most uncertain. If the style is less tortuous than usual, the stylist is even more ...”

“... across his book. But his argument shifts the main burden of explanation, as William Lamont and Nicholas Tyacke have shifted it, onto the reign of Charles I and the regime of Archbishop Laud, ‘the greatest calamity ever visited upon the English Church’. Although that verdict is unlikely to go unchallenged, even those who question it should welcome ...”

“... conflicts but about their nature. If there is an orthodoxy under attack, it has been built upon Nicholas Tyacke’s deservedly famous essay of 1973, ‘Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Revolution’. According to that view, there was not much wrong with the Church of England until Charles I and Archbishop Laud got their hands on it in the 1620s. Since ...”

“... became known as MI5 and MI6 had to be kept so secret; MI5 remained officially secret for 80 years. Christopher Andrew has another explanation, however. It was just a ‘taboo’, he writes (quoting the historian Michael Howard), like ‘intra-marital sex’. Everyone knew it went on, and was ‘quite content that it should, but to speak, write or ask questions ...”

“... 1688 and 1776 and admits some oppositional Tories and some capitalists to a share in virtu. Christopher Hill supplies an engaging and suggestive piece on radical pirates after the Restoration; Wilson Hays offers an interesting study of John Everard; and there is some predictably tough and valuable political analysis from David Underdown and ...”

“... the New Puritans, but it is the story really of his own appetite that concerns him. His review of Nicholas Nickleby undoubtedly helped that show to its later success, but Mr Levin claims that he himself ‘legitimised enthusiasm’ (his emphasis). I am drawn to his hope of glimpsing into transcendental things, but most of this offensive book is accusatory: if ...”