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“... Christine, as she was baptised in Vienna in 1717, did not expect to become queen – or ‘female king’ (rex femina) as she was known in several of her many lands. After observing the ravages of the War of the Spanish Succession, Charles VI issued the Pragmatic Sanction, an edict which aimed to ensure that his (as yet ...”

“... swan’s down, a pinch of panegyric and a soupçon of sedition. Leave to ferment in the blood of a king. That would produce most of the verse of this period, in which conventional elements are graciously reassembled in posies for readers to sniff and to pluck. Consider this delicious morsel of anonymity, ‘On a Lady Sleeping’, plucked by Peter Davidson from ...”

“... with stories to tell. In 1896, in the newly founded capital of Addis Ababa (‘new flower’), King Menelik II granted a gasha of land to each of the superpowers – Britain, France, Italy and Russia – camped on his doorstep. A gasha is about 36 hectares, or 90 acres. The Russian patch has long since been split up and the Italians had some of theirs ...”

“... agenda for debate on the English Revolution since the Seventies. Kevin Sharpe’s Personal Rule of Charles I, Conrad Russell’s Fall of the British Monarchies and John Morrill’s Nature of the English Revolution all represent distinct standpoints, but certain common features continue to stand out. Rejecting both constitutional explanations of the Caroline ...”

“... with the emphases of Jonson’s The Forest, where the country is praised ‘as an image of the King’s peace’. When set beside ‘anti-courtly’ Spenserian verse, ‘To Penshurst’ and ‘To Sir Robert Wroth’ ‘give the sense of a nation which, whatever its faults, is essentially harmonious and well-ordered and reflects credit on its ...”

“... the provenance by Margaret Dalivalle. She had originally proposed that the picture had belonged to Charles I and had been acquired for £30 – a rather low sum – by a certain John Stone after the execution of the king in 1649, when it was described as ‘a peece of Christ done by Leonardo’. This fitted with an earlier ...”

“... fate to have stick to him all the pornographic and profane verse that emanated from the court of Charles II. Abstruse pornography has always had a special appeal for scholars, or rather did have, as long as they were unmated males living a collegiate existence. Most scholars are still loth to give up their frigged-out version of Rochester. Eleven years after ...”

“... they were by James’s pacific inaction or by the apparently popish inclinations of his successor, Charles I. (Puzzlingly, the dust-jacket credit attributes the original portrait to Michiel Janszoon van Miereveldt but, when the picture is shown again in the tenth chapter, the caption indicates that it is ‘from the studio of Honthorst, and reminiscent of ...”

“... Two of England’s best remembered kings, Henry VIII and Charles I, stand in the shadow of lost princes. Each had an elder brother who was Prince of Wales and expected to succeed. Had Prince Arthur and Prince Henry lived the Reformation and the Civil War would have followed different courses or might not, it is sometimes suggested, have taken place at all ...”

“... restricted. Mr Fletcher thinks about Parliament and the country before he thinks about the King and the Court; and he thinks about the House of Commons before he thinks about the House of Lords. Within the Commons he shows little interest in political groupings, and perhaps assumes too readily that the House can be divided between Pym and his allies on ...”

“... of American resolve is in prospect, the figure of Hitler is as difficult to exclude as the head of King Charles. The drawback in the analogy is that, from a Hitler, it is impossible to demand much less than his complete destruction or unconditional surrender. Still, other keywords such as ‘expansion’ and ‘poison gas’ do keep on creeping in. Partly ...”

“... Stephen King has occasionally raised a rueful protest against being typed as a horror writer – even with the consolation of being the best-selling horror writer in the history of the world. But, as he disarmingly reminds us, there is worse literary company than Lovecraft, Leiber, Bloch, Matheson and Jackson. ‘I could, for example, be an “important” writer like Joseph Heller and publish a novel every seven years or so, or a “brilliant” writer like John Gardner and write obscure books for bright academics who eat macrobiotic foods and drive old Saabs with faded but still legible GENE McCARTHY FOR PRESIDENT stickers on the rear bumpers ...”

“... of a horse race.) According to the director’s own amused voiceover, a young seahorse resembles a King Charles spaniel. Fully grown, it’s a puffed-up and pompous individual, fretfully anthropoid, given to pouting and anxiously darting its eyes. Like the sea snail, this animal is ambiguously sexed: the female inserts her eggs in the male’s belly, and ...”

“... future. The military details will be familiar to many from school history lessons. Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, having overcome the doubts of some of his own commanders, marched south from Derby to confront the hastily mustered Hanoverian army under the direct command of George II. As in previous engagements, the numerical ...”

“... said to his face: ‘It would be a good thing if you were taken and shut away, as was done to Charles the Simple. There are houses with iron bars at Windsor that would be good for imprisoning you securely.’Henry was also affectionate by nature and incurably weepy. He broke down in tears whenever he was saying goodbye to his (far ...”