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“... her lifetime and all but forgotten after her death in 1732. In this, the first full-length study, King has new archival research to draw on and is able to piece together some obscure periods of Barker’s life, especially her years of exile in France between 1689 and 1704. She can ‘reasonably surmise’ that her subject was at different times an anatomy ...”

“... to the sky; His be yon Juno of majestic size, With cow-like udders, and with ox-like eyes. As Kathryn King observes in the first full-length biography of Haywood for almost a hundred years, these lines are straight out of ‘the well-stocked cabinet of misogynistic satiric conventions’, and they needn’t depict anyone in particular. Edmund ...”

“... The Tragedy of Macbeth takes its cue from the witches. Or, rather, its one witch, played by Kathryn Hunter, who multiplies herself when she feels like it. Early in the film she stares at us across a pool while talking to Macbeth and Banquo. She is alone but there are two reflections in the water, neither of them in the right place to be hers. Then ...”

“... as under the guidance of superior beings in the stars, who were presumed to ‘work much as the King and his Government work to produce the conditions under which the inhabitants of, say, Samoa, might develop to the highest pitch of their mental capacity’. He showed no other signs of insanity and became quite a successful, and very ...”

“... it. There was a lot of glitter, hand sanitiser, and a samovar of tea. The show would open at the King’s Theatre in less than a week, yet the atmosphere was all laughter and promise.I have a thing for pantomime. I’ll spare you my theory that the best of it is better than King Lear and The Cherry Orchard put ...”

“... by Donato Giannotti, a committed republican, in 1539. It was never finished. ‘The story goes,’ Kathryn Tempest writes in her biography of Brutus, ‘that when Michelangelo tried to put a face to the Liberator, he found not a noble conspirator but an unjust oppressor.’ It’s the simultaneous presence of these two faces that makes Brutus an enduringly ...”

“... convent’s policy of denying Thérèse pain relief was elevated into suffering gladly embraced. Kathryn Harrison’s short life of Thérèse complements Monica Furlong’s 1987 study, and is in many ways more sympathetic. Neither biographer found the saint easy to like. Despite her sobriquet of the ‘Little Flower’, Thérèse was tough when her saintly ...”

“... to meet – leaders of governments-in-exile, naval commanders, bomber pilots, H.G. Wells, the boy-king of Yugoslavia – was made available. Churchill played host at a country-house weekend. The queen had her to tea at Buckingham Palace. Anthony Eden took her to the movies. Drawbell wasn’t satisfied. In the book he wrote about Thompson’s visit – Dorothy ...”

“... nothing of the promised gift. The little scene sounds like a parodic reminiscence of the scene in King Lear when Goneril and Regan reduce Lear’s retinue from 100 knights to none. The citation of a great many forgotten novels from which Austen probably learned something, the demonstration that she familiarised herself with ‘the disinheritance novel’ as a ...”

“... begetter seems to have borrowed his middle name and misspelt it), was manifestly not an explorer. Kathryn Tidrick, in her admirable study, labels him an ‘adventurer’. He was a dedicated if rather unsuccessful marksman who achieved celebrity by writing, with some charm, about A Hunter’s Wanderings in Africa (1881). Tidrick suggests that Selous, an old ...”

“... it in 2018 for more than a million dollars. The blurbs from people like Gillian Flynn and Stephen King (‘stunning’, ‘gripping’, ‘brilliant’) led me to believe I was sitting down to a thriller, but there are no unexpected plot twists here. In a disclaimer, Russell says any similarities with her own upbringing – she grew up in Maine and withdrew ...”

“... of trust’. They drew up a ‘black list’ of MPs who had accepted offices and rewards from the king, claiming that this was a conflict of interest. In 1700 and 1701, after the constitutional revolution of 1688, excise and then customs collectors were disqualified from sitting in Parliament for this reason. Earlier, in 1644, Parliament had established an ...”

“... committee’s first report – said to have been scribbled down in the back of a taxi by Anthony King – have become the rhetorical kitemark of ethical standards: integrity, objectivity, accountability, honesty, openness, selflessness and leadership.The Nolan Principles didn’t stop almost two hundred former ministers and senior civil servants taking up ...”