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“... a stormy night with the discovery of a dead man in a barn, carrying papers that identify him as “John Whitaker”,’ Macintyre writes. ‘By dint of some distinctly plodding detective work, Inspector Richardson discovers that every document in the pockets of the dead man has been ingeniously forged: his visiting cards, his bills, and even his passport, on ...”

“... were brothers, well-connected enough to buy pardons from the Crown, or to atone by serving in the King’s Army, but fatally drawn to highway robbery. The rector, Richard de Folville, was eventually dragged from his church by armed men and beheaded on the spot. ‘The records reveal so many thugs in holy orders,’ Spraggs writes, ‘that it has even been ...”

“... needed prints of their works to spread their fame and standing. From 1829 until his death in 1837, John Constable grew increasingly preoccupied with printmaking and collaborated with the young engraver David Lucas to translate his oil sketches and paintings into 22 mezzotints, part of what would become known as English Landscape Scenery. Proofs survive, and ...”

“... exemplified in a more aristocratic and accomplished manner, complete with emblematic fruit, by John Michael Wright’s c.1668 painting of James Cecil, fourth Earl of Salisbury and his sister Lady Catherine, now at Hatfield. Unhelpfully, there is no indication on the canvas as to the pear-bearing girl’s identity, and no date either. However, a modern ...”

“... articulate. Biographers don’t forget the history of himself that Dryden was to have given John Aubrey, but that he never gave. Dryden adapted Shakespeare, out of confidence and from a sense of necessity. I have chosen Hamlet as a point of comparison between them – a comparison, after all, provoked by Dryden himself – for a reason best given by ...”

“... of God, as well as a history of our self-conceptions, of our utopias and terrors, and this is what John Casey provides. Casey is in many ways an ideal guide. He is bracingly conservative about the writing of cultural history, meaning that he likes texts, and chronology, and evidence. He has taught English at Cambridge for many years, and his book has about it ...”

“... from the appearance of the new Oxford Middleton. Even as the blurb declares that Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino’s monumental collection is ‘based on the award-winning design of the Oxford Shakespeare’, the binding and dust jacket defiantly proclaim its difference from that distinguished model. The Shakespeare was bound in the press’s traditional ...”

“... The play was, as Dryden’s dedication says, corrected by Rochester, who commended it to the King, and some of its polished repartee, as Winn and others have said, may owe something to Rochester. But the song, though as good as Rochester, isn’t like Rochester. If Rochester in the ‘Allusion’, and Shadwell in The Medal of ...”

“... of The Madness of George III to be printed. Nick Hytner has the good idea of fetching the King back from Kew to Westminster to prove to the MPs that he has recovered from his madness. Of course, it never happened, and had he suggested this departure from the facts at the outset, I’d probably have demurred on grounds of historical accuracy. But the ...”

“... home grown. British true crime tends to be about British killers – Ian Brady (See No Evil), John Christie (Rillington Place), the Wests (Fred and Rose), Dennis Nilsen (Des), Jeremy Bamber (White House Farm), Harold Shipman (Doctor Death) – while American true crime favours American atrocities. I don’t see my preference for the British product as ...”

“... Jubilee Session. No other reigning sovereign had visited the principal university buildings since King Edward VII opened them in 1905. Six months before the Queen’s visit, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor J.M. Whittaker, put to his recently-appointed Professor of English Literature a ‘general idea’ – to celebrate the Queen’s visit by reviving the ...”

“... being physically part of an audience, the more essential distances are decently maintained). Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria built a private playhouse so that he could watch Wagner’s operas quite alone; today, every owner of a television set enjoys a similar privilege. Indeed, one’s privilege is greater, for though the paranoid Ludwig could isolate himself ...”

“... followed his lead, so Lilith is ‘the lamia’ in the Geneva Bible and a ‘screech owl’ in the King James Version. The New International Version has ‘night creature’, which is a pretty bland way to describe a murderous demon. Nowhere is she described as a flatfish, however.The verse from Isaiah indicates that Lilith belongs to a wild place. To banish ...”

“... and interests ran in close parallel from their first meeting, around 1930. Duchamp’s ‘The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes’ (1912). If Duchamp was ‘Dada’s Daddy’, as the critic Winthrop Sargeant proposed in Life magazine in 1952, then Dalí (17 years his junior) was Dada’s deranged and errant offspring. Both artists played up to ...”

“... counter to the slow march of figures, taking the form of silent communication between Christ and John, their contact barred by a stern Roman officer, as the Virgin Mary faints. Some of the later narratives in the nave (scenes from the New Testament twinned with the Old) achieve a similar intensity, reducing the action to minimal but memorable formulae, often ...”