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“... sat in Oxford and taught and grumbled while Labour lost power. Although the new prime minister, Edward Heath, greatly disliked the oil companies, his government proved no more capable than Labour of grasping the nettle of oil taxation, so in 1972 Balogh went public with a blistering article in the Sunday Times – something he doubtless enjoyed, given that ...”

“... to £4,610 million in income-tax reductions. In conflict apparently with the original plans of her Chancellor, Mrs Thatcher insisted that there must be some reduction of the basic rate, so that every taxpayer would get something. Nevertheless only £730 million of the total reductions went to the 41 per cent of taxpayers whose incomes did not exceed £4,000 ...”

“... retail price maintenance, but when he saw how strongly it would be resisted he backed off. Edward Heath soon showed that he was made of sterner stuff by pushing through its abolition and, when he took over the EEC negotiations from Maudling, there was a clear increase in drive and energy. Nonetheless, Maudling’s instincts on Europe were wiser than ...”

“... inquiring into the working of the Bank Acts met. Gladstone was present, as was Disraeli, then chancellor of the exchequer, and business opened as usual despite the appalling stench coming from the Thames, until suddenly Disraeli could stand it no longer and rushed out, briefing papers in one hand, a handkerchief in the other over his nose. He was followed ...”

“... Cooke explains at the beginning, ‘follows the life of a London family through the reign of Edward VII. He was the big bearded monarch who had a notorious appetite for bed and bawd, but nevertheless was known as Edward the Peacemaker.’ Nearly forty years later, in January 2012, Emily Nussbaum reviewed the first US ...”

“... camps has been of a student holding a sign that reads: ‘Columbia, why require me to read Prof. Edward Said if you don’t want me to use it?’ The protests have shown that the American university, which operates more and more as a high-cost degree factory where humanities departments squirm on the chopping block, is still a place where people can learn ...”

“... the assassination of the Empress Sisi and the suicide at Mayerling of Crown Prince Rudolf. But Edward Shawcross’s pacy, graphic account of the episode is careful to show that their empire began as a Mexican dream rather than a Habsburg folly. The exiled aristocrat José María Gutiérrez de Estrada traced his country’s woes back to the death of ...”

“... in which year it happened. Was it 1989? No, it must have been 1990, the same year I became Chancellor – that is a measure of how remote the decision to join was from me. It seemed to belong to a different era, but in fact it occurred only eight weeks before I became Chancellor. Our hero evidently doesn’t realise ...”

“... year until the outbreak of the Second World War,’ Urwand writes. ‘From the day Hitler became chancellor of Germany to the day he invaded Poland, American movies were massively popular in the Third Reich.’ German critics too found much to admire in American movies, from screwball comedies (It Happened One Night) to imperialist adventure tales (Lives of ...”

“... that was at the knee. Vast savings in labour and material could no doubt have been made if Captain Edward Molyneux or Captain Hardy Amies had come up with the mini-skirt, but there was trouble enough on the Home Front without pandering to what Hazlitt, contemplating Regency fashions, called ‘the greedy eye and rash hand of licentiousness’. The Germans had ...”

“... a soon-to-be ex-wife and three children behind in London. Harry Ransom, then president and later chancellor of the university, was determined to make it a cultural centre, a not incurious notion. He proposed ‘that there be established somewhere in Texas – let’s say in the capital city – a centre of our cultural compass, a research centre to be the ...”

“... of the best stories come in Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron by the adventurer Edward John Trelawny, and so are a bit too good to be quite true, but they are evidence of the way Shelley came across. Trelawny’s account of Shelley’s attempt to learn how to swim in a deep pool in the Arno catches the thing very well:He doffed his jacket ...”

“... Mr Larkin, what do I call him? I feel like the student at a dance, suddenly partnered by the Chancellor of the University, who happened to be Princess Margaret. Swinging petrified into the cha-cha he stammered: ‘I am not sure what to call you.’ The strobe was doused in the Windsor glare: ‘Why not try Princess Margaret?’ A bleak smile from Hull ...”

“... Edward Thomas​ called the approach to Oxford by train ‘the most contemptible in Europe’. There’s no view to speak of, and the station is a big shed with lots of glass and cheap detailing: blue pillars and PVC fascias. The city’s relationship to the railway, like its relationship to the world, is arrogant but insecure, high-minded but petty ...”

“... heart of a yet more ambitious project. Its guiding spirit was Henry’s ‘angel-tongued’ lord chancellor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, the man in whom, as the Venetian ambassador put it, ‘the whole power of the state is really lodged’. In war-ravaged 15th-century Europe, an old idea began to gain new impetus: the dream of a unified Christendom, bound ...”