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“... a Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield (c.1590), Antony Munday’s two-part Downfall and Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon (1598) and Jonson’s unfinished Sad Shepherd – remember or re-enact the paradigmatic story of Robin Hood. In George Peele’s Edward I, the Welsh bandit Prince Lluellen and his followers give their cause a veneer of mischievous ...”

“... who executed fifty prisoners by blowing them from guns after the Kuka outbreak in 1872. Sir Robert Davies, O’Dwyer’s predecessor as lieutenant governor of Punjab, defended Cowan wholeheartedly: ‘Blowing from a gun is an impressive and merciful manner of execution, well calculated to strike terror into the bystanders.’ Mountstuart ...”

“... Donne, penned at the bottom of a letter informing Anne of his dismissal from Egerton’s service. Rundell, who doesn’t revere her subject so much as like him an enormous lot, prefers a different origin story for the verse, from a 17th-century jestbook in which the new-married Donne, ‘in a frolic’, scrawls the punning line in chalk on his ...”

“... The pages of the Spectator and the Telegraph have been filling up with denunciations of the civil service and Parliament for some time. Tory moderates such as Amber Rudd and Matt Hancock have shown themselves to be willing to say things they don’t believe in exchange for power. This is the energy and propaganda that propelled Johnson to office. It’s not ...”

“... this year’). He got an A in Metalwork, but the teacher couldn’t think of his name and wrote ‘Robert’ while telling him to keep up the good work. His form teacher, Mr Norman, said that ‘Ronnie’s attitude and standard of work is slipping. I hope that he takes note of what has been said to him recently. He is always pleasant and happy.’ Ronnie ...”

“... exclusively for Harvard students in 2004. No human enterprise, no new technology or utility or service, has ever been adopted so widely so quickly. The speed of uptake far exceeds that of the internet itself, let alone ancient technologies such as television or cinema or radio.Also amazing: as Facebook has grown, its users’ reliance on it has also ...”

“... that carries Russian gas across the Black Sea to Turkey. No word yet about plans for the Eni service station on the road into Moscow from Sheremetyevo airport, the first ‘foreign-branded operator’ to open in the Soviet Union, hot on the heels of McDonald’s, in 1991.Draghi, like other Western leaders, has expressed not only revulsion but shock at ...”

“... the domestic intelligence network, with Special Branch frequently acting as the muscle on security service operations, as well as pursuing subversives in its own right. In 1919, under the Bolshevik-hating Sir Basil Thomson, Special Branch adopted the practice of intimidatory attendance at left-wing gatherings. It comes as no surprise to learn that it was ...”

“... with some of the older children. In Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens, Robert Gottlieb quotes the letter in which Dickens explains to his wife what happened: ‘Presently, we heard them come back and say to each other with some alarm: “Why, the gate’s shut, and they are all gone!” Ally began in a dismayed way to cry out, but ...”

“... blame the historians, however: most of them believed they were going against the grain in the service of truth, believing themselves under attack from Republicans – a belief, as Roy Foster makes clear in his introduction to Paddy and Mr Punch, that some of them still hold. They never realised that they were justifying the new state, an Ireland cleansed ...”

“... she regretted her measure to abolish free milk in schools (characteristically blaming the Civil Service for her mistake), or that she had fought against the idea of abolishing the rates when it was proposed by Heath. It was also something of a shock to hear that she had toyed with the idea of inviting Roy Jenkins back from Europe to be Chancellor of the ...”

“... uninhibited generals and proconsuls, there was also a tradition of cynical candour, beginning with Robert Clive himself. His barefaced defence to the House of Commons select committee inquiring into the Company’s practices – ‘My God, Mr Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation’ – set a high benchmark. But the villainous ...”

“... Clinton’s. Nuland is married to the co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, Robert Kagan, one of the leading promoters of the Iraq war. We may never know what Obama thought Nuland was up to when she flew in to the Maidan to pass out cookies to the protesters in Russia’s backyard. But the message has got around by now that Obama ...”

“... biography may have something to do with that: the sense – Virginia Woolf’s sense, as well as Robert Louis Stevenson’s, and Dostoevsky’s – that nobody is simply one thing. Some people write biographies, you suspect, as a way of not writing about themselves. Lennon’s book is good in that way, in the fresh, clarifying, non-Boswellian way of letting ...”

“... entered the federal prison on McNeil Island in Puget Sound, where he discovered Scientology, read Robert Heinlein’s science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land, and first heard the Beatles. From Scientology, he took ideas that he would combine with Carnegie’s: let the other fellow think he was an immortal spiritual being; exploit his traumatic ...”