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“... often.’ Margery Dayrell worried that her son Nathaniel could not sleep, though he was drowsy. John Windmill complained that he ‘cannot sleepe nor take any rest on his bed or up or Downe’. Hugh Thomson feared that his son, ‘who he supposeth to be taken or planet stroken’, had been unable to sleep the previous night. Broken and disrupted sleep could ...”

“... and pray to saints,’ implying that they could be seen as more Catholic than Protestant. Bishop John Aylmer was worried by the hard-won ‘capitulations’ that officially established Anglo-Ottoman trading relations, confessing that ‘surely in mine opinion it is very strange, and dangerous, that the desire of worldly and transitory things should carry men ...”

“... by life in small groups and communities.’ In spite of the scepticism of their betters – John Locke thought that ‘a middle-aged plough-man’ could ‘scarce ever be brought to the carriage … of a gentleman, though his body be as well proportioned, and his joints as supple’ – it’s clear to anyone who’s read the words of the ‘lesser ...”

“... and his fellow werewolves would assume lupine form three times a year – around Pentecost Eve, St John’s Eve and St Lucy’s Eve. Together, they would journey on foot to Hell, which could be entered through a local swamp. Hell itself was invisible to others, Thiess said, since it was beneath the ground and its entrance could be seen only by those who ...”

“... Inside​ the manuscript that contains the 16th-century protocols of the council of St Gall, in Switzerland, is a poem that offers helpful advice. ‘Oh man, think long,’ the anonymous poet urges, ‘before talk escapes your mouth.’ If you want to be successful, you need to learn to ‘speak thoughtfully, without anger and hatred … Listening quickly and answering slowly ...”

“... the Victorian city. But not everything had moved on since the 16th-century martyrologist John Foxe described the only lights on London Bridge and some of the capital’s streets as coming from the candles of costermongers trading along the way. For a long time, even as London changed, hawkers traversed the city and fed its residents in ways that kept ...”

“... that good writing could be killed by poor delivery. Richards quotes a poem by the Elizabethan wit John Harington, complaining that someone had read his epigram with ‘point so perverse’ that in the end it seemed ‘neither witty nor a verse’.The formatting choices made by authors and printers are suggestive, but remain open to interpretation. In ...”

“... we may well think that they also serve who only sit and sleep. For both Prendergast and Catherine Gallagher, the counterfactual is not any old fantasy but an alarm call for those who have been sleeping too long or too comfortably. There are attractions and risks in reaching for such an instrument. The might-have-been may offer ‘the perfume of the ...”

“... with references to the idea of ‘informal empire’ as developed by the British historians John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson in the early 1950s, but their famous article was actually about what they called ‘the imperialism of free trade’: free trade guaranteed the British world economic dominance because they had exclusive control of the high ...”

“... categories of political analysis: no wonder the authors of one 1976 study quoted by Michael Gallagher in this valuable book described Ireland as a ‘persistent deviant case’: i.e. they could not understand it. A few concrete examples from recent events may help to confuse the issue even further. Item: a government whose leader is pledged to a ...”

“... It​ was John who had the idea that I should say something about his professional life at his funeral. It was a very nice idea and I’m glad – not to say flattered – that he had it. But I found it a spookily hard thing to do. ‘Spooky’ because every time I thought I had a point to make I heard myself checking it with John – ‘Is that right?’ ‘Can I say that?’ ‘Does that make sense?’ – and then I began to understand what had happened to all of us ...”

“... important courtiers and patrons of the period, using her paternal family connections to promote John Donne, among others, and participating in literary exchanges with her clients. The cultural prestige of these ladies in turn inspired Aemelia Lanyer, a commoner, to seek their patronage for her own poetry, which celebrated women’s virtues. Another ...”

“... for his next venture, in Ireland. Despite his background, his move there in 1896 was coincidental. John Leslie appealed in the SDF’s paper, Justice, for a socialist organisation to hire Connolly, who was facing destitution, and a job offer came from the Dublin Socialist Club at the modest salary of £1 per week. His time in Ireland would help shape his ...”

“... and speech takes one form and no other.’ Let the theorists make of that what they will. Tess Gallagher, Carver’s widow and partner in an intense literary enterprise (she moved in the opposite direction, from poems to stories), has collated his last book. Her introduction stresses that poetry was always on the horizon for him. Carver ...”

“... sending the message stating that “our war is over” which started the correspondence with John Major, and it is pretty clear in retrospect that one of the intermediaries in the chain between the government and the IRA did in fact embellish the message.’ The peace process, Tony Blair’s former chief of staff is suggesting, began with an ...”