Monday, 18 April 2016

President and sole member, he said, of some seventeen undergraduate social and literary societies

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[Thomas] Earp had set himself the task of keeping the Oxford tradition alive through the dead years - as president and sole member, he said...
Sunday, 17 April 2016

Cricket ... wasted the most time in the best part of the year

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[Nevill] shared my dislike of school traditions, and decided compulsory games were the worst. Of these we considered cricket the most objec...
Tuesday, 12 January 2016

They had the difficult and delicate task of persuading a large industrial constituency that an industrial representative would not further industrial interests

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The streets were lively with the red and the blue colours of politics. The Liberal member for the Parliamentary borough of Hanbridge, which...
Monday, 11 January 2016

Nobody had contrived to make England see that her very existence would not be threatened if museums were opened on Sunday

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[During a seven year period in the 1870s] the world had been whizzing ceaselessly from one miracle into another. Board schools had been ope...
Friday, 8 January 2016

God's bureaucrat, who dressed soberly in black, read everything, ruled absolutely, thought suspiciously and acted cautiously

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Philip was suspicious of the whole idea of Holy Leagues, and it was not in his nature to act spontaneously. God's bureaucrat, who dress...
Thursday, 7 January 2016

The planners and leaders of this conflict were astonishingly old by the standards of the time

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The planners and leaders of this conflict were astonishingly old by the standards of the time. The contest for Malta brought together the c...
Wednesday, 6 January 2016

Who would dream of building such high rooms with such spectacular volumes for a cup or a dish or a bowl

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When I was a boy, I would walk up the stairs and then more stairs [at the V&A]. You had to be resourceful to navigate your way through ...