“... caps picked up on the Lodi battlefield, and held to the uppers by bits of string. Lieutenant Robert, the young conscript who is for the moment the author’s other self, and who will make a cursory appearance later in the novel as an Italian Count, is formally invited to dinner by the Marchese on whom he is billeted; and he is more preoccupied with ...”

“... about its anxieties, distortions and deformations, was The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressel, which until the mid-1980s every trade unionist, Labour Party member and left-leaning student in Britain could safely be said to have read, or at least heard of. Then in 1984 everyone put it down and picked up Money. For the benefit of anyone too ...”

“... of something they have seen and absorbed. But they’re not good enough as actors. Unless you’re Robert De Niro, the fridge door always catches when you open it, the cigarette lighter won’t work first time. He learns that there is only one way to eliminate the intransigence of material things: you have to be a better mimic than the mimics, to repeat and ...”

“... Picasso was a force of nature, whose unique vitality was just as evident in his late work. Robert Hughes was scathing in Time magazine: The last Picassos are also the worst. It seems hardly imaginable that so great a painter could have whipped off, even in old age, such hasty and superficial doodles. One enters in homage and leaves in embarrassment ...”

“... 43. And there’s Schubert, who in the mid-1930s enrolled in Amherst College (where he befriended Robert Frost), dropped out, rematriculated and dropped out again; who suffered bouts of depression and underwent electric-shock treatment in the early 1940s; and who died of tuberculosis in 1946 at the age of 33. As for Ashbery, he worked on the Norton Lectures ...”

“... it was abroad: indeed, the English ‘translation’ of Cuvier’s great works by the Scotsman Robert Jameson emphasised the concordance of the geological and the biblical record far more than the original had. In short, the traditional British drama, with its heroes and villains, is a romanticised confection designed to put our national achievements at ...”

“... was noisy, lively, inventive – a ‘political carnival’, as Lynn Bennie, James Mitchell and Robert Johns describe it in their new book, Surges in Party Membership: The SNP and Scottish Greens after the Independence Referendum (Routledge, £135). Its ‘innovative campaigning methods’ included ‘campaign stalls, impromptu flash mobs, city marches and ...”

“... evidence has led to countless wrongful convictions – the Bridgewater Four or, more recently, Robert and Lee Firkins, cleared in December 2024 after nearly twenty years in jail, spring to mind – and should not be admissible. Despite this, the Court of Appeal failed to address the supposed confession in Sullivan’s case. They also failed to address the ...”

“... his bravado. Mortimer Menpes described him as ‘slight, small-boned and extremely dainty’. Robert Goodloe Harper Pennington thought that Whistler permitted few to see the ‘tender’ flesh beneath the ‘shell’. ‘You are tender-hearted,’ Pennington wrote, though ‘I dare say you would smack me “good and hard” if I was within reach.’ The ...”

“... He leads you to imagine a different future.There is vivacity in the scummy – in the film, Robert Stephens is a tremendous spiv, tempting Jo’s mother, played by Dora Bryan, with the promise of crazy paving – and in the desperate: Jo and her mother climbing out of a basement window to avoid paying rent, Bryan carrying a budgie in a cage. I had ...”

“... allowed not to take part in the shooting, and suffered no punishment. The other helpful book is Robert Jay Lifton’s magnificent The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (1986). Lifton interviewed a number of doctors who had worked at Auschwitz, some of them prisoners and others SS medical officers on the camp staff. No research ...”

“... In 1794 Robert Watt, an Edinburgh wine merchant, together with a few associates, was arrested for allegedly framing a plot to seize the Edinburgh post office, the banks and the castle, and to issue a demand that George III dismiss the government of William Pitt and make peace with the French Republic. Just before the arrests, an English medical student studying in Edinburgh, John Edmonds Stock, had been sent down to London by Watt with a letter to the London Corresponding Society inviting them to mount a similar insurrection ...”

“... was trying to bury the case, Marina Litvinenko pushed for an inquest into her husband’s murder. Robert Owen, a High Court judge, promised an ‘open and fearless’ investigation. In 2013 the foreign secretary, William Hague, made an application for ‘public interest immunity’ – which meant that the government’s classified files on Litvinenko ...”

“... in order to advance their careers and secure an income. On becoming prime minister in the 1720s, Robert Walpole gave posts to six members of his family (brothers, sons and in-laws), as well as to other long-time supporters, prompting the charge that Britain was governed by a ‘Robinocracy’. As late as 1831, Earl Grey was accused of securing offices for ...”

“... press would immediately label as evidence of kleptocracy if they happened in another country. Robert Jenrick remains housing secretary despite admitting ‘apparent bias’ in overruling planning inspectors and the local council to approve Richard Desmond’s Westferry Printworks development – 24 hours before the introduction of hefty new levies that ...”