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“... Charles James Fox was early hailed as ‘the phenomenon of the age’: an Infant Phenomenon like his chief opponent and perfect foil, William Pitt, who, Fox’s mother is said to have predicted, would be ‘a thorn in Charles’s side as long as he lives’. David Hume, encountering Fox at 16 during one of his formative visits to Paris, was startled by his intellectual power and maturity and already foresaw him as ‘a very great acquisition to the publick’, if the lure of a life of cosmopolitan dissipation, already strong on him, did not distract him ...”

“... her, along with some sort of sublimated sexual interest (Hiscock is coyly 1950s about this). Enter Frances Harris, a senior curator of manuscripts at the British Library. In this meticulous book she presents a finely balanced and doubtless definitive view of what must be one of the most complexly motivated of human relationships. She redates letters which ...”

“... remarkable woman have in the past been numerous but in the main soft-centred, preoccupied – as Frances Harris puts it – with her ‘tempestuous personal relationships’. Harris’s own book, by contrast, is founded on careful research in some twenty-five different archives on both sides of the Atlantic. As a ...”

“... own political rhetoric. There is much background detail about Lloyd George’s relationship with Frances Stevenson and her willing self-immolation on the altar of his political career (clearly Frances would never have been permitted to keep Lloyd George awake at nights with nagging, as Asquith was kept awake in November ...”

“... the radical Whig or “real Whig”’ of the 1690s.This enduring deception would appeal to Robert Harris, whose Selling Hitler: The Story of the Hitler Diaries (1986) laid bare the combination of hubris and greed that prompted the premature newspaper publication in 1983 of extracts from sixty purported ‘diaries’ by Adolf Hitler – though that particular ...”

“... set eyes upon the mansion which frequently dominated the novel. An early example of this is in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Making of a Marchioness, where Emily comes upon Palstrey Manor and ‘almost wept before the loveliness of it’. More composed, but no less enamoured, was Harriet Wimsey (née Vane), as she visited Denver Ducis for the first ...”

“... Mullah’ of Somaliland, who was bombed into submission within a week. Arthur (Bomber) Harris was a squadron leader in the Third Afghan war of 1919, and pioneered the strategy of ‘control without occupation’ in Iraq, which entailed sprinkling fire on straw-roofed huts: ‘within forty-five minutes,’ ...”

“... have landed some shrewd blows on their target. Chief among these Windsor-wallopers has been Frances Donaldson, whose much-acclaimed biography undermined many of the legends which lingered from his time as Prince of Wales, substantiated most of the criticisms levelled against him as King Edward VIII, and painted a pathetic picture of his later years as ...”

“... Others by contrast joined together with sympathetic husbands in socialist and feminist causes. Frances Morrison, for example, supported her house-painter husband in trade-union organisation, in the publication of a socialist newspaper, and in promoting equal pay and the personal practice of egalitarian marriage. Such women toured the country to address ...”

“... restrictions she put on his wallet and on his waistline, G.K. adored his sober, dutiful, unshowy Frances, and was content to be mothered in his incompetence. But no children came, and Chesterton’s sister-in-law, Ada – she married his younger brother, Cecil – later claimed the wedding night had been so ghastly for ...”

“... Kollontai proposed the mass roll-out of co-operative childcare centres. In more recent decades, Frances Gabe thought about how to build ‘self-cleaning’ houses and Shulamith Firestone dreamed of the ‘diffusion’ of care responsibilities across the adult population. Participants at the National Conference of Third World Lesbians and Gays resolved to ...”

“... study.) Two important correspondences in particular have recently come to light: one with James Harris of Salisbury, the author of Hermes, whom Johnson called ‘a prig, and a bad prig’, but who was a warm friend to Fielding, lent him money sometimes, and wrote an unpublished essay on his ‘Life and Genius’; the other concerned with Fielding’s legal ...”

“... creative than the 11 full-plate pictures. These have been skilfully thematised by the designer Frances Salisbury (sub-contracted, presumably). The photography (by Phil Starling) is moody, artfully under-exposed and obliquely-angled. Cumulatively the illustrations suggest a cathedral quiet and nobility of mission, combined with beyond-the-cutting-edge ...”

“... class was Halton House, an intimidating example of le goût Rothschild, described by Lady Frances Balfour as a combination of a French château and a gambling house – ‘Eye hath not seen nor pen can write the ghastly coarseness of the sight.’ Its proprietor, Baron Alfred de Rothschild, liked to admire it from a dogcart drawn by two zebras. His ...”