“... code – takes us deep into one of the major subjects of the novel, the difficulty of learning, as Robert Lowell’s title says, ‘to speak of woe that is in marriage’. When Ralph sees what has happened to his cousin Isabel’s grand ambitions for a rich, free life, we are told that he ‘woefully’ exclaims to himself how far she has fallen. In a discreet ...”

“... increasing supply; Joshua Gilpin introduced its use in the US in 1804. And in Paris Nicolas-Louis Robert invented a papermaking machine which, through the use of a conveyor belt, produced not single sheets but a continuous roll: the belt replicated the actions of the vatman and coucher, even the right to left, forward and back shake to distribute the ...”

“... popular literature took account of various stress disorders. Even before the wars, in books like Robert Burton’s bestselling Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), there was an awareness that ‘the simple narration many times’ of traumatic stories could help bring meaning to confusion and offer control to the sufferer. But in an age of Christian, neo-Stoic ...”

“... a triable indictment. The phrase had been copied by Wilson from a note by his secretary of state, Robert Lansing, who was against the whole idea of a trial, and was endorsed with minimal discussion by the three other members of the council. Wilson was well content. He had even managed to replace ‘principles’, in a phrase in the third paragraph of Article ...”

“... of his ‘experimental geography’ draws on the precedent of the ‘site-nonsite’ artwork of Robert Smithson in order to respond to Fredric Jameson’s call for a ‘cognitive mapping’ of advanced capitalism. In the process Paglen also suggests a model of photography that turns the influential account of Roland Barthes on its head: rather than the ...”

“... and precocious Mary Ward, later better known as Mrs Humphry Ward, author of the hugely successful Robert Elsmere (1888). Through the good offices of her uncle, Matthew Arnold, she met Renan in Paris, and thanks to the patronage of John Morley she reviewed his autobiography in Macmillan’s Magazine. Renan’s conception of the ethical character of Jesus ...”

“... a very strange scene in which an Amisian femme fatale sets out to turn Larkin on at a party in Robert Conquest’s flat. The femme fatale is called Phoebe Phelps. She’s presented as a slightly older woman for whom Amis had a troubling sexual passion between 1976 and 1980, which would make her a – perhaps the – model for Nicola Six in London Fields ...”

“... before him. The impact of these paintings on the history of cinema is hard to overstate. Valentine Robert calls them ‘protocinematic’ in their continuous temporal flow and shifting points of view; her catalogue essay traces the many filmmakers who have used their almost documentary detail like a storyboard. Besides the Americans, these include Alice ...”

“... He replaced the glorious monsters of his early days at the club – Vieira, Petit, Sol Campbell, Robert Pirès, Freddie Ljungberg, the otherworldly Thierry Henry – with endless tiny midfielders and not very good defenders. From 2006 until 2015, he actively refused to buy a goalkeeper. He seemed wilfully blind to the massive hole in the midfield that ...”

“... scheming protagonist ventures along it in search of the room occupied by her husband’s nephew, Robert, who is hot on her (bigamous) trail. ‘She stopped and looked at the number on the door. The key was in the lock, and her hand dropped upon it as if unconsciously.’ She stands for a few moments trembling, ‘then a horrible expression came over her ...”

“... work is universally described as the crown of all the works of the master’. By the time of Robert Stevenson’s Spanish Cathedral Music of the Golden Age (1961), ‘the master’ had become ‘a great genius’. Evidence of actual performances also began to increase, particularly in France, where Charles Bordes, basing his edition on Haberl’s and ...”

“... films of the 1950s, for that matter – and no gay characters either (although Dennis Price and Robert Hamer, the star and director of Kind Hearts and Coronets, were both gay). The quintessential ‘Englishness’ so often lauded in these films wasn’t total: throughout his book, Stubbs is unusually attentive to the musical content of screen comedy, and he ...”

“... reference to Sartre and Jung. ‘One night Juan recounted the entire plot of an epic poem by Robert Browning,’ the narrator says. ‘Juan only brought up Browning because the poet raised pertinent questions about the very act of composition’ – as if Juan is a term paper come to life. Most of this amounts to little more than a list of reading ...”

“... campaigned against a scheme of sending the ‘Black poor’ on London’s streets to Sierra Leone. Robert Wedderburn, born in Jamaica, became a celebrated preacher and orator; his was an uncompromising Black voice. He linked political radicalism with abolitionism and threatened British slave owners with the fate suffered by French planters in the Haitian ...”

“... and distinctive talent. Gerard Manley Hopkins thought the author might be Irish, observing to Robert Bridges in 1885 that ‘Field is a common, Michael a very common, Irish name.’ Bradley triumphantly reported that at least one reader was convinced that Field must be ‘a Bristol man’. Privately, the authors called themselves ...”