~ You know young Francis Weston? He that waits on the king? His people are giving out that you’re a Hebrew... Next time you’re at court, take your cock out and put it on the table and see what he says...
We are not priests. We don’t want their sort of confession. We are lawyers. We want the truth little by little and only those parts of it we can use.
You said,' Camille protested, 'that when you wanted to get on terms with Gabrielle you cultivated her mother. It's true, everybody saw you doing it, boasting in Italian and rolling your eyes and doing...
You know what it's like when a cart overturns in the street? Everybody you meet has witnessed it. They saw a man's leg sliced clean off. They saw a woman gasp her last. They saw the goods looted, thie...
Why are we so attached to the severities of the past? Why are we so proud of having endured our fathers and our mothers, the fireless days and the meatless days, the cold winters and the sharp tongues...
Vere dignum et justum est, aequum et salutare.
To his inner ear, the cardinal speaks. He says, I saw you, Crumb, when you were at Elvetham: scratching your balls in the dawn and wondering at the violence of the king’s whims. If he wants a new wife...
The multitude, Cavendish says, is always desirous of a change. They never see a great man set up but they must pull him down--for the novelty of the thing.
The multitude is always desirous of a change. They never see a great man set up but they must pull him down - for the novelty of the thing.
The English will never be forgiven for the talent for destruction they have always displayed when they get off their own island.
Sometimes I'm at stool all night.507
Some say the Tudors transcend this history, bloody and demonic as it is: that they descend from Brutus through the line of Constantine, son of St Helena, who was a Briton. Arthur, High King of Britain...
So this morning--waking early, brooding on what Liz said last night--he wonders, why should my wife worry about women who have no sons? Possibly it's something women do: spend time imagining what it's...
She held out her hands in a curve around herself, to show how emotion distends you. It makes you feel full up, a big weight in your chest, and then you don't want your dinner.
Possibly it’s something women do: spend time imagining what it’s like to be each other.One can learn from that, he thinks.
Once, in Thessaly, there was a poet called Simonides. He was commissioned to appear at a banquet, given by a man called Scopas, and recite a lyric in praise of his host. Poets have strange vagaries, a...
No man as godly as George, the only fault he finds with God is that he made folk with too few orifices. If George could meet a woman with a quinny under her armpit, he would call out 'Glory be' and se...
Mirabeau: If you have been told to clear us from this hall, you must ask for orders to use force. We shall leave our seats only at bayonet point. The King can cause us to be killed; tell him we all aw...
Men will tell you that they are so in love with you that it is making them ill. They will say they have stopped eating and sleeping. They say that they fear unless they can have you they will die. The...
Look, he says: once you have exhausted the process of negotiation and compromise, once you have fixed on the destruction of an enemy, that destruction must be swift and it must be perfect. Before you...