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“... as it would in conversation, ‘ingenious’, but ‘revenue-generating’. ‘Support’ means ‘cash-subsidy’. In other words, ‘we’ll flog everything that is not nailed down.’ The words in this document are less creative than the 11 full-plate pictures. These have been skilfully thematised by the designer Frances Salisbury ...”

“... his Collected Poems, has 58; Cat’s Whisker by Philip Gross (three years on) 41; Jouissance by William Scammell (two years) 38; Disbelief by John Ash (three years) 55; Ken Smith’s Wormwood, a collection of poems written during a spell as a writer in residence in Wormwood Scrubs (one year), 30. The justification for such work-rates, beyond the economics ...”

“... The Deceivers was derived was, Merchant noted, ‘loosely based on the work of Major-General Sir William Sleeman, who, as William Sleeman of the Indian Political Service, discovered, exposed and destroyed thuggee’. William Savage, the hero modelled on Sleeman, ‘enters a mysterious ...”

“... read as a child, to Charles I’s imprisonment in Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight (Sir William Temple, Swift’s patron, briefly toured there in 1648 as a young man). Sometimes, the awareness of gaps and things missing leads to provocative conjectures: might the odd absence of lavish interiors and luxurious things in the world of Swift’s ...”

“... Then there was the price of promotion, which in a good proportion of cases took place after a cash handover; in theory you could rise to the rank of lieutenant colonel after only nine years in the army through purchasing power alone. Soldiers from the lower classes who were promoted from the ranks tended to receive commissions in regiments no one else ...”

“... killing, disease, or starvation) during these dreadful years. This may be a bit high (Sir William Petty put the number at between a quarter and a third), but Carlton plausibly argues that even in England a higher percentage of the population died in the civil wars than died in Flanders during the First World War. Carlton’s anecdotal survey has many ...”

“... we know about her suggests that she was an exceptionally strong-minded and self-willed woman and William an exceptionally docile husband,’ one is bound to wonder just what it is that we do know. Is this Stone’s own – possibly stereotypical – view of male and female temperaments? Or is his interpretation influenced by the stereotypes of those male ...”

“... strategic and maritime benefits conferred on the empire by the Caribbean. The radical journalist William Cobbett, a rather unexpected ally of the slaveholders, believed that the planters ‘ought to be scrupulously attended to, as if they were farmers in Cornwall or in Yorkshire’ and were ‘entitled to the same protection in their persons and fortunes, as ...”

“... long before he died, when he was visiting Washington as a guest of the then director of the FBI, William Sessions. Over dinner, we asked him about his personal security procedures. But Falcone turned aside the implied offer of a professional audit, declaring that the security arrangements provided for him were excellent. Actually they were comfortable, even ...”

“... politics he served many masters, but he was more consistent in his loyalties and changed sides for cash offers less often than most of his fellow captains. Between 1363 and 1368 he fought principally in the employ of the republic of Pisa, between 1368 and 1372 principally in that of Bernarbò Visconti, between 1372 and 1377 in that of Gregory XI. In 1377 he ...”

“... York Trilogy, the writer’s identity is always a plaything: Quinn, the writer, uses the pseudonym William Wilson, who himself writes about the improbably named Max Work, and is mistaken for Paul Auster, ‘of the Auster Detective Agency’. (The ‘Auster’ character always gets the smartest lines in the story, being allowed, for example, to expand on his ...”

“... The most recent​ of William Kentridge’s works on display in Thick Time at the Whitechapel Gallery (until 15 January) is called Right into Her Arms. It’s also one of the best. A raised stage, three metres long, about a metre high, is dressed with a flimsy backdrop of beige, brown, grey; here and there are torn swatches of yellow, green and maroon ...”

“... centuries.’One of the first things the English learned from the Scots was central banking. William Paterson, a farmer’s son from Dumfriesshire, was instrumental in the establishment of the Bank of England in the 1690s, embodying the same ‘practical genius’ with which another Scot, John Law, established what would become the Bank of France in ...”

“... of Persons, the first volume of his celebrated Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69), William Black stone concluded his account of how the law makes a husband and wife one person by suggesting that the legal disappearance of the married Englishwoman was effectively a tribute to her sex. ‘These are the chief legal effects of marriage during the ...”

“... troops were massing in Scotland or near the Channel. Unfortunately, one of the Garbo spies, ‘William Gerbers’, a Swiss-German businessman, was based in Liverpool, where the real ships and troops were gathering. After the invasion, it would seem suspicious that Gerbers hadn’t reported that troops were gathering on the Mersey en route to Casablanca. So ...”