“... criteria) as well as an upbringing on a farm where he killed and observed nature close-up may have contributed to this breakthrough; but it was possible only because of his astonishingly pliant play with language. ‘Pigs’ contains the lines ‘Us back in cool god-shit. We ate crisp./We nosed up good rank in the tunnelled bush./Us all fuckers ...”

“... was ‘an amateur artist who, on vacations, used to paint funny faces on tennis balls’. Marvin may have suggested the packet colour: pink. It was instantly popular: ‘Packets were swiped from restaurants and stolen from hospitals,’ Cohen says. A&P, the supermarket chain, came calling, and pretty soon every diner in America offered Sweet’N Low ...”

“... lately because his recent memoirs, Winter Journal (2012) and Report from the Interior (2013), may startle fans of his writing with their formlessness and clutter, ham-handed lyricism and epic egotism. My fear, picking up 4321, was that it had been written by the imprudent, tone-deaf Auster of those two books, rather than by the one I reluctantly, thornily ...”

“... from the beginning or end of the play. Rather than a collection of complete dramas, the papyrus may contain a selection of greatest hits.Both passages are unmistakably by Euripides. They share his love of aphorisms, his obsession with the overreach of the powerful and the dangers of cleverness. In one passage, Polyidus rebuffs Minos’ demands: ‘So ...”

“... but at least he was Stravinsky. His wife’s letters to him, which preponderate over his to her in Robert Craft’s new selection of Stravinskyiana, Dearest Bubushkin, have biographical importance but do not all that frequently rise above the level of any wife to any husband. The book, though physically attractive and lavishly illustrated, is a hard read. What ...”

“... his death in 1963, he sent a message from his hospital bed to the Poetry Society of America: ‘I may wobble when I’m sitting up but I never waver.’ These declarations of independence sound reassuringly like the Frost of the anthologies, the author of ‘guidebooks for the spirit of individualism’, as Robert Faggen ...”

“... still rich in hints of the life savoured by its great authors, from Dunbar to Norman MacCaig and Robert Garioch. The heyday of its literary, cultural and philosophic life lasted for a hundred years to the death of Scott and left its mark on Europe and America. An ancient city, a capital, with authors of all kinds, from Gavin Douglas to James Boswell to Annie ...”

“... My dear Lady Olliffe,’ Robert Browning wrote in March 1877: I have just been reading my old friend Miss Martineau’s protest against the publication – and indeed, retention – of all correspondence. Here, now, is a sample of mine: be assured I shall never demand it again, from any apprehension that hereafter the friendliness in it may be at variance with whatever feeling I please to entertain thirty years hence ...”

“... October 1962 was not August 1914 because John Kennedy had learned the lessons of Munich, which may be summarised as follows: get angry in private, think before you speak, say what you want, make clear what you’re prepared to do, ignore bluster, repeat yourself as often as necessary and keep the pressure on. Where Kennedy learned the mixture of forbearance and resolution which lies at the heart of international peace and good marriages is a mystery; his mother and father were no better at solving problems than Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler ...”

“... HUAC: Is your brother a member of the Communist Party? Robert Oppenheimer: He is not a member of the Communist Party, to the best of my knowledge. HUAC: Are you speaking as of the present time? Robert Oppenheimer: I am, sir. HUAC: Was he a member of the Communist Party in the past? Robert Oppenheimer: Mr Chairman, I will answer the questions you put to me ...”

“... Robert Wyatt​ is one of the last survivors of the 1960s pop music scene in Britain. He has been recording for nearly half a century. He was said to be reckless and unfocused for most of his life, but he’s also the best sort of slow-burner moving along at his own pace. Having gone for it late in the day, he hung on to his ‘tankie’ party card – Communist Party of Great Britain – beyond the call of duty, but only because he’d steered his very own Centurion into a deep thicket, opened the hatch and taken a lengthy breather before deciding the game was up ...”

“... My name​ is Róbert Valzer and I like walking, not that I have anything to do with the famous Robert Walser, nor do I think it strange that walking should be my favourite hobby. I call it a hobby but I accept – or rather I am prepared to entertain the fact – that where I live in this Central European country I am considered to be too unstable to be regarded as a normal person and that my hobby is not to be compared with other people’s hobbies ...”

“... was William Camden’s ponderous official history, then the influential courtier biographies by Robert Naunton, Froude’s probing critique, the rigorous constitutionalism of A.F. Pollard, and so on to John Neale, his pupils and colleagues, and beyond to Peter Lake and John Guy. So often studies of Elizabeth’s reign are impossible to disentangle from the ...”

“... verses of solo guitar. The most striking antecedent invoked by Murray is the Delta blues singer Robert Johnson, whose ghostly appearance in this survey of ‘post-war pop’ (he died before the war) may be conclusive proof of his supernatural powers. Johnson’s life and music are legendary, largely because he is thought ...”

“... as in so many of his barrack-room card games, he ended up with misère: Querétaro fell on 15 May 1867. Maximilian tried ineffectually to escape and then surrendered. He and his two leading Mexican generals were court-martialled and sentenced to be shot. European and American intercession failed to win a reprieve: feelings in the liberal camp ran too ...”