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“... tone pretty well with his remark that ‘the Jewish Marienbad has gone downhill since the British King Edward died.’ But Mr Soroker’s social standing is toppled by an epistle in the most ceremonious and denunciatory Hebrew from the formidably orthodox Itche-Meyers, accusing him of paying Falstaffian attentions to both their wives: their letter (here ...”

“... most of the colonists, couldn’t see it, but to the ingenious theologians, anxious to serve their king and their Church, it seemed providential, precise and even practical. To Bartolomé de Las Casas, however, another Dominican, later Protector of the Indians and Bishop of Chiapa in Yucatan, the line was too fine. ‘False testimony, a contrived argument for ...”

“... of the aristocracy of the earth, all the advantages that any boy should have are in my hands. I am king over my opportunities. No one can take away from me the possibilities of growth founded on the firm rock of inherent advantage and power. Seventeen was the age at which Cummings entered Harvard, where he stayed for five years. His biographer tells that this ...”

“... to write and produce rousing pageants: Fun to Be Free, written with his frequent Hollywood partner Charles MacArthur, drew large audiences to Madison Square Garden shortly before Pearl Harbor, and starred Jack Benny, Betty Grable, Eddie Cantor, Ethel Merman and Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson, who tap-danced on Hitler’s coffin. Hecht also wrote propagandist ...”

“... appendage for securing popular assent. (Elton provocatively highlighted the successes of Charles I’s personal rule during the eleven years when he no longer bothered with ‘that tiresome body’, as Elton only half-ironically called it.) It is integral to this absolutism that there should be no separation of powers – ‘one of the worst and one ...”

“... The Anti-Curse, a broadside poem attacking the ‘damn’d rebellious brood’ who ‘basely did King James depose’, which attracted a heavy fine and three alarming hours in the pillory. His known output over the next few years is understandably anodyne, but he may have continued to print illegal books in secret, and after 1699 he put his head above the ...”

“... relations with a number of comparatively obscure Victorian authors – John Hanning Speke, Charles Reade and Margaret Oliphant – as well as some reflections on the rise of literary agents. There is a good deal of entertainment in these case studies, most consistently in the chapter on Speke, the Nile explorer. Having staked £2000 to win the bidding ...”

“... a set of dinnerware as a prenuptial gift for Princess Elizabeth. Tupperware was presented to King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia and the Maharaja of Ender, and in 1948 the Tupper ‘Millionaire Line’ of houseware won a major award from the journal Plastics World. But the reputation of plastic was so mixed (some kinds disintegrated; others were malodorous or ...”

“... they claim, was a newly hatched rationalism running around with the shell on its head. As Charles Taylor wrote in A Secular Age, the Reformation was ‘central to … the abolition of the enchanted cosmos and the eventual creation of a humanist alternative to faith’. This is the influential master narrative to whose attempted demolition Alexandra ...”

“... devices for the vertical transport of goods, primarily, but also of people. The English diplomat Charles Greville, writing in 1830, recalled with admiration a lift in the Genoese palace of the Sardinian royal couple: ‘For the comfort of their bodies he has a machine made like a car, which is drawn up by a chain from the bottom to the top of the house; it ...”

“... Gregory Sallust, whose looks and personality were inspired by Tombe), an admiring biography of Charles II, melodramatic science fiction in the vein of Edgar Rice Burroughs, ‘Crime Dossiers’, in which a whodunnit is packaged with manufactured clues – a hair in a cellophane wrapper, a spent match from a hotel. In this prodigal context, Wheatley’s ...”

“... against Spain. Languet, who was then 54, had been sent by the Elector of Saxony to congratulate Charles IX on the peace of Saint-Germain, which, in granting concessions to the Huguenots, marked a brief pause in the French wars of religion. Protestant hopes in Europe rode high, but by August of that year were dashed by the events of St Bartholomew’s ...”

“... themselves on the British imagination. One of these was the massacre at Kanpur, where the Maratha king Nana Sahib turned against a corps of about a thousand Europeans, laying siege to their cramped entrenchments. After a punishing fortnight under fire, and some 250 deaths, the British surrendered with a promise of safe passage to Allahabad. But as they pushed ...”

“... through state and society in these years came from the very top. As prince of Wales and then king, Edward VII gambled, had mistresses and corrupted his protectors into indulging his whims, while his son was linked to the sordid allegations about aristocrats and male prostitutes in Cleveland Street. Edward was particularly obsessed with dress, which ...”

“... of her ability to ‘speak and write pure Latin, Greek and Hebrew’. ‘But can she spin?’ the king asked. John Gallagher relates this story and many like it in Learning Languages in Early Modern England, in which he assembles a rich body of documentary evidence to illustrate the methods and social importance of instruction in vernacular languages. While ...”