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“... to inspect a sperm whale’s penis? This is one of the many intrepid expeditions undertaken by Richard King in the course of researching Ahab’s Rolling Sea. His book, like Moby-Dick itself, tells you everything you ever wanted to know about whales but were too ashamed to ask. The fact that the sperm whale’s penis, or ‘grandissimus’, is four ...”

“... and was among those executed after the rebellion. ‘The play,’ he averred, ‘was of King Harry the 4th, and of the killing of King Richard II.’ Third, on 18 February, one of the players, Augustine Phillips, in signed testimony given under oath, described the play as ‘the play of the deposing and ...”

“... autumn I bought, at Deighton Bell in Trinity Street, a copy of George III and the Politicians by Richard Pares, a book I have still, my name written in it by a friend, as I disliked my handwriting then as I do now. It was a detailed, allusive book, demanding a more thorough knowledge of 18th-century politics than a schoolboy could be expected to have, but I ...”

“... in argument, that anybody with a genuine interest in Shakespeare, and particularly in Hamlet, King Lear and Othello, should read it for pleasure and then reread it to pick quarrels about details. Jones’s material is drawn principally from readings in earlier Shakespearean texts that differ from those of the collected edition, the Folio of 1623. His ...”

“... or at least unprovable, that a Mr R. Hood ever existed,’ though, for some people, Robin Hood, King Arthur ‘and even God himself all existed because of their manifold presence in human life and culture’. Knight concludes that ‘Robin Hood’s biography is mythic in that the multiform figure does not have physical identity.’ His biography is thus ...”

“... Tip 7 was not an act of God but an avoidable tragedy.These two submerged villages are central to Richard King’s oral history of Wales – or, really, of Welsh-language activism and Welsh nationalism – in the late 20th century. The injustices and catastrophes caused by the government in Westminster weren’t the only thing that stimulated Welsh ...”

“... getting some decent attention lately. Last year saw the publication of The Devil’s Cormorant by Richard King, a fine study of several species of the bird on several continents, as well as an argument against its shabby treatment in the US. In 2012 Denis Wild published The Double-Crested Cormorant: Symbol of Ecological Conflict. A decade earlier, Lyanda ...”

“... kinds of trouble academically and emotionally.’ In a letter to a friend from 1966, reproduced in Richard King’s new oral biography, Travels over Feeling, the 15-year-old Russell is already referring to Walt Whitman, John Cage and Allen Ginsberg (prefiguring later, more explicit involvements with queer sexuality, paganism and utopian politics). There ...”

“... By far the most striking image of Richard II is the one found in the great portrait of him, crowned and enthroned, which still survives in Westminster Abbey. Painted in the 1390s, when the king was in his twenties, it gives him a slightly boyish, even feminine appearance, with red cheeks, full lips and a small goatee beard ...”

“... Levi Roach​ ’s book is an attempt to redeem the reputation of Æthelred II, king of England, with one interruption, from 978 to 1016. This is a hard task, as the book’s title concedes: Æthelred has been known as ‘the Unready’ for around a thousand years. Ever since 1066 and All That (originally a parody of Oxford University exam papers) he has also been logged as ‘the first Weak King of England ...”

“... a blizzard on Palm Sunday, he took the throne from the weak, ineffectual Henry VI and was crowned King Edward IV.Usurpers were plentiful in the 15th century. Edward’s claim was by lineal descent from Edward III, and was a strong one if you ignored the deposition of Richard II in 1399. In the mid-1450s, ...”

“... determination to get drunk. In this aim they were all too successful, so that a visit to the King (it was always singular in conversation, even if the sign over the door said otherwise) and Keys was liable to be hazardous for a relatively sober Expressman. Fights were frequent, bawling arguments were perpetual, and many of the participants were senior ...”

“... like modern historians, were agreed that she both sought and exercised power. But for a medieval king or queen, power couldn’t be divorced from land, family, inheritance and hereditary privilege. As the heir to Aquitaine, the largest and richest province in France, Eleanor (or Aliénor) was from the age of twelve the most eligible heiress in Europe. She ...”

“... Perched​ on one platform, King Charles I; perched on another, the Dutch painter Daniel Mytens; lowered in between them, a canvas some two feet taller than the king, who was reportedly of small stature. If, as an inscription on the finished portrait insists, the likeness was painted ad vivum, then this might have been the way to do it ...”

“... When Richard, Duke of York, laid claim to the English throne in 1460, he presented himself as a physician, sent to heal the ills of the kingdom. In partnership with his apothecaries, the faithful Commons, he would probe ‘the root and bottom of this long-festered canker’ and separate ‘the clean and pure stuff from the old, corrupt and putrefied dregs ...”