Quotes from Peter Ackroyd

50 per cent of the people died before the age of thirty, and 90 per cent before the age of fifty.

In the medieval marriage service the wife had pledged to be 'bonner and buxom in bed and in board'. This has the nice alliteration of an older language. Now both partners were asked to 'love and to cherish' 'for better, for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health'.

somnolence, and on one occasion could not

He had read the text in Leviticus that prohibited any man from marrying the widow of a dead brother.

The presence of water invites song and music; there is something about its flow, and the sound of its flow, that elicits other melodies.

But 'if ' is not a word to use in history.

It was a business that engaged a significant part of the nation; the wool was given to village women to comb and to spin before being sent to the weaver; to this day, an unmarried woman is known as a spinster.

The Normans also gave to the English the concept of the inherited surname that came to define a unified family and its property.

The cure for tonsillitis was inspired. 'Take a fat cat, skin it, draw out the guts and take the grease of a hedgehog and the fat of a bear … All this crumble small and stuff the cat, roast it whole and gather the grease and anoint the patient therewith.

The press spread fears about the effects of prolonged cycling. Overenthusiastic cyclists might develop 'bicycle hump' by leaning too long over the handlebars; acute cases of 'bicycle foot' and even 'bicycle face' were reported

That concept is more properly known as 'caesaro-papism'; the king was now both Caesar and pope.

The press no longer exaggerated the incidence of minor accidents

When the first sarsen stone was raised in the circle of Stonehenge, the land we

A popular phrase of the time was that 'these be no causes to die for'.

The visitors then turned their attention to the universities, where it was decided that the learning of the scholastics and the medieval doctors should be abandoned in favour of the humanist learning approved by Erasmus and other reformers.

parlous state

The Cistercian monks were known for their practice of eviction.

The root of narcissism lies in anxiety, and the fear of fragmentation, which may be assuaged by the sight of the reflection.

The government's response to the Irish potato blight of the 1840s, which caused around 1 million Irish people to die of starvation or disease and another million to emigrate, was incompetent and indifferent when it was not cruel.

A large proportion of Venetians worked in the textile industry. There were the lace-makers, their eyesight ruined by their labour. Children, from the age of five, were enrolled in the trade. The exquisite refinement of the art, prized by the rich matrons of Europe, can be measured in human suffering.

The land was left vacant, and fewer men were available to defend it. So the Angles, and the Saxons, moved westward. Anglo-Saxon civilization was created by a pandemic.

In the end the natives would be so mixed and mingled with the new settlers that the term Saxon or Angle ceased to have any meaning. All would become English.

The financial penalties for murder, for example, were graded according to the 'worth' of the victim. It was a harsh and divisive society, only made possible by the continuous exploitation of the unfree.

Did you consider when you went headlong into a war like this,' Kitchener asked the cabinet, 'that you were without an army? Did you not realize the war was likely to last for years and require tens of thousands of soldiers?' He was soon permitted to ask for volunteers among the male adult population.