“... experience. Michael Tanner speaks of its ‘qualifications for religious status’; while for Roger Scruton, Tristan und Isolde offers nothing less than ‘a sacrificial consolation for the imperfect loves of those who witness it’.In the early days, the expressionistic intensity of Tristan und Isolde produced violent reactions in its audiences. The ...”

“... traditional practice – very dusty, it is beginning to seem, as old ‘as history herself’, Roger Aubenas suggested in 1960, and very probably somewhat older than that. Some of the problems that could arise with Bray’s ‘brothers’ had already been revealed by the publication in 1994 of Pierre Chaplais’s studies on Piers Gaveston: Edward II’s ...”

“... been his hundredth birthday in 2012 drew contributions from all the paladins of the Tory right: Roger Scruton, Andrew Roberts, Simon Heffer, Iain Duncan Smith. His stream of long, considered speeches continued to ripple through Tory minds, all the more perhaps because they were now running underground. During his wilderness years Powell became the Baptist ...”

“... job as an articled clerk at a firm of solicitors called Knapp-Fishers, where one of the partners, Roger Maddison, groped her when she was talking on the phone to a client. When she finished the call, he told her off for shrieking. Again, she didn’t tell anyone: ‘it never crossed my mind that complaining would do anything other than make things worse for ...”

“... House for recommending that schools, churches and businesses move gradually towards reopening. Roger Severino, a Christian evangelist who is now the director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights, says: ‘Governments have a duty to instruct the public on how to stay safe during this crisis and can absolutely do so ...”

“... redoubts. However fleetingly, Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, Vanessa Bell, Raymond Mortimer, Roger Fry, Vita Sackville-West, Frederick Ashton and the like made Vogue, for a couple of seasons, a contemporary intellectual and artistic touchstone. Still, it ended in tears, perhaps not surprisingly, given Todd’s underlying self-destructiveness and the not ...”

“... Jenny. Diski feels more accurately like me, though it is an entirely invented name to which both Roger-the-Ex and I changed when we got married. There was a gasp and then a brief silence.‘How are you?’I was 11 when she had last known me, but what else was there to say?‘I’m well, thank you.’I explained that I was a writer these days and was thinking ...”

“... desecrated in 1793. The camera lingers on a 13th-century bas relief of demons taunting the soul of King Dagobert, a drama in stone whose protagonist she dignifies, like the prisoner under duress in Monangambeee. In the voiceover, we hear the words of the Abbé Suger, the first abbot of Saint-Denis, and funeral orations by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet; the score ...”

“... his imprisonment) a supplier of controlled substances to the President’s chaotic brother Roger. As in the case of his disordered family and courtship background, so with his amateur experience on the drug scene: once in Washington Bill Clinton proselytises for ‘family values’ and ‘the war on drugs’ with the zeal of a convert. Not since Nixon ...”

“... even as he was denounced by the right for refusing to embrace the capitalist West. When he told Roger Seydoux, the director of cultural relations at the Foreign Ministry, of his desire to escape the demoralising state of affairs on the Left Bank, Seydoux proposed another trip: a lecture tour in South America. Camus welcomed the idea, but not without ...”

“... not walk-outs) got him down, but he didn’t mind the critics. When Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave Lost Highway (1997) ‘two thumbs down!’, he quoted them on the poster as ‘two more great reasons’ to see the film. (Ebert often emerges as the arch-loser of the Lynch story, sulkily admitting that he felt ‘jerked around’ by the ...”

“... by John Bayley and by Peter Conrad stand out) but there is one brilliant full-length study, Roger Gard’s Jane Austen’s Novels, that serves as the best possible introduction to her work. And Gard does notice Margaret: he calls her ‘the one completely superfluous figure in Jane Austen’s novels’. He is supported, moreover, by an equally classic ...”

“... in 1875, and known for his charisma, cunning and strategic skills, was dubbed ‘the uncrowned king of Ireland’. He was brought down in 1890, having been named by William O’Shea as co-respondent in a divorce action, and died the following year.) It didn’t even look as though Sinn Féin had captured the public imagination. In opening his tobacco shop ...”

“... like Margaret Rutherford playing Miss Marple; Keith’s character, like that of Addison’s Sir Roger de Coverley, was there to inform us of the harmlessness and ineffectuality of a defunct class represented by this posthumously lively personality. Helen Mirren’s portrayal of a female police chief in Prime Suspect was a new departure on British television ...”

“... investment. I contacted the three executive directors and 11 directors – Sir John Sunderland, Roger Carr, Rick Braddock, Ellen Marram, Guy Elliott, Rosemary Thorne, David Thompson, Sanjiv Ahuja, Wolfgang Berndt, Lord Patten and Raymond Viault. Only Berndt replied (Chris Patten’s assistant told me he was in ‘rural Asia’ without email, then, when the ...”