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“... from his Utopia. Even so, it had been Erasmus who had given him letters to friends such as Peter Giles, dedicatee of Utopia, in Antwerp and it was Erasmus who saw to the publication of Lucian, the epigrams and Utopia, bustling about to secure commendatory letters and so enhance them. Erasmus also coined and disseminated the description ‘a man for all ...”

“... and absorbing book. The origins of the Abbey – to be precise, the Collegiate Church of St Peter in Westminster – are shrouded in uncertainty. A Saxon foundation on Thorney Island, the one dry spot in the fenland that once stretched from Chelsea to Battersea, the Abbey formed the West minster to St Paul’s East minster. The settlement which, under ...”

“... Institut des lettres et manuscrits as part of an exhibition entitled Sade: Marquis de l’ombre, prince des Lumières (the last word of the punning title might be translated as either ‘light’ or ‘enlightenment’). The Musée d’Orsay, too, mounted a lavish exhibition inspired by Sade’s visions with a title – Attaquer le soleil – taken from The ...”

“... V. Prochnow Jr, with 65 entries by Prochnow senior; and in Quotations For Our Time, by Dr Laurence Peter (author of The Peter Principle), with 37 entries of his own. It’s not wholly a new conceit: even L. T. Hoyt, last century, was not so unjust to himself as to deny his own verses comparison with those of Tennyson and ...”

“... left little money, having, says Bellori, ‘spent everything on living magnificently, more like a prince than a painter’) included a wonderful collection of paintings – 17 by Titian alone, according to the inventory taken after his death; but there were doubless studio props and drapes as well. The Countess of Sussex was able to find compensation for the ...”

“... targeted in a number of Van Gogh’s columns in 2003 and 2004 because of her relationship with Prince Johan-Friso, the queen’s second son. Wisse Smit was bright, ambitious and attractive, while Johan-Friso was at best dull and worthy, but she also had what is known as a colourful past. She had once had an intimate relationship with a married Bosnian ...”

“... Aretino (1492-1556), author of the risqué Sonetti Lussuriosi; Machiavelli (1469-1527), whose Prince outlines an instrumental conception of religion as a useful theatre for the new ruler that chimed with a sense of De tribus’s (non-existent) thesis; Michael Servetus (1511-53), burned at the stake; and Bernardino Ochino, author of Disputa intorno ...”

“... the shortage of men as a lack of romance and took a slew of marriage proposals in her stride. Prince Albert, Duke of York was ‘quite a nice youth’ but he hardly stood out from the crowd. It seems to have been sheer determination that made Bertie, the stammering, nerve-racked and less than handsome second son of George V, persist in proposing to the ...”

“... shepherd life.) But the ‘King and Collector’ of the exhibition title is perhaps best read as a prince who developed a taste for oils on canvas while visiting the Spanish Habsburg court in a failed bid to secure a wife and who, once crowned in 1625, had the impetus and opportunity to splurge. Cognoscenti and hustlers pushed through the gates that opened ...”

“... with several days’ notice) and then fall to, licking the same dish. It’s not, to quote Peter Cook in another connection, enough to keep the mind alive. Perhaps it’s a culture of this sort – simultaneously overfed and undernourished – that leads people into the ghastly habit of using familiar first names to describe celebrities they will never ...”

“... it in Monte Carlo to Craigie Aitchison’s exhibition ... I immediately acquired a new admirer: Prince Rainier’s chamberlain, no less. He rang the gallery and asked, ‘Qui est cette fille délicieuse?’ and described the dress. Alors. Gradually, however, I found that, for myself at least, there was some point in puzzling over the diaries of Ossie ...”

“... under threat, but the historical certainties of Marxism lie undisturbed. ‘Broadly speaking,’ Peter Linebaugh tells us, ‘the English Revolution was a conflict among three social forces. The bourgeoisie, led by Oliver Cromwell and organised in Parliament, aroused the English proletariat to make war against Charles I, the High Church and the ...”

“... later etiquette books reveal the same disjunction between form and function). Like Machiavelli’s Prince, which tells princes how to adapt to circumstances, and shows readers that few if any princes ever do change their methods to meet new situations, The Courtier resembles a handbook. Like The Prince it is anything ...”

“... problems, such as those endured on the last of the Pink Panther movies. The CAA agent had got Peter Sellers three million dollars to do the film. He got Blake Edwards, who hated Sellers, the same amount (not to direct, but because he co-owned the rights). The agent also represented the scriptwriter, the director, and two of the producers. ‘It was about ...”