By the Banks of the Neva: Chapters from the Lives and Careers of the British in 18th-Century Russia 
by Anthony Cross.
Cambridge, 496 pp., £60, November 1996, 0 521 55293 1
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“... with egg yolk and oats and then exposed to the mercy of two hungry ducks. A merchant called Robert Nettleton was awarded the rank of ‘archimandrite’ in a club called the British Monastery, although he also allowed his house to be used for divine service and was actively involved in petitioning George I for assistance in building an English ...”

Diary

Lulu Norman: In Ethiopia, 4 September 1997

“... with gold and silver crosses, by soldiers of a British expeditionary force in 1868, after Sir Robert Napier’s defeat of King Tewodros, who had spent many years collecting them. They are now in the possession of the British Library and the Queen, among others, and there are no plans to return them. Lalibela was named after a man born in the 12th century ...”
What is Love? Richard Carlile’s Philosophy of Sex 
edited by M.L. Bush.
Verso, 214 pp., £19, September 1998, 1 85984 851 6
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“... the period’s other radicals: William Thompson, Francis Place, George Petrie, Thomas Spence, Robert Owen and Richard Carlile. In his day, Carlile was no less celebrated as a political agitator, and as a polemical atheist, than he was as a sexual reformer: some such mix of activities was the rule for this group. But it was Carlile’s sexual programme ...”

Missing the Vital Spark

Mark Ford: Tony Harrison, 13 May 1999

Prometheus 
by Tony Harrison.
Faber, 86 pp., £8.99, November 1998, 0 571 19753 1
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“... Aeschylus’ own son, Euphorion. In the foreword to his 1967 prose version of Prometheus Bound, Robert Lowell noted that this play is ‘probably the most lyrical of the Greek classical tragedies’, but also ‘the most undramatic – one man, a sort of demigod at that, chained to a rock, orated to, and orating at, a sequence of embodied ...”

The Aestheticising Vice

Paul Seabright: Systematic knowledge, 27 May 1999

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed 
by James C. Scott.
Yale, 464 pp., £25, May 1998, 0 300 07016 0
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“... Lafite du Languedoc’; others have been praised to the heights by the likes of Hugh Johnson and Robert Parker. The wine is now on the list at the Tour d’Argent and the 1986 vintage retails at the vineyard for £65 a bottle. The sole shadow on the lives of these millionaires is cast by the odd hailstorm. No one to whom I have begun recounting the story ...”

Jamming up the Flax Machine

Matthew Reynolds: Ciaran Carson’s Dante, 8 May 2003

The ‘Inferno’ of Dante Alighieri 
a new translation by Ciaran Carson.
Granta, 296 pp., £14.99, October 2002, 1 86207 525 5
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“... styles. Cary’s pioneering version of 1805 was predominantly Miltonic; in later years, Robert Morehead transformed Dante into a second Spenser, while Thomas William Parsons made him out to be ‘stately and solemn’ in the manner of ‘Gray and Dryden’. T.S. Eliot’s essay of 1929 argues against such Anglocentric and Italocentric ...”

McNed

Gillian Darley: Lutyens, 17 April 2003

The Architect and His Wife: A Life of Edwin Lutyens 
by Jane Ridley.
Chatto, 524 pp., £25, June 2002, 0 7011 7201 0
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Edwin Lutyens, Country Houses: From the Archives of ‘Country Life’ 
by Gavin Stamp.
Aurum, 192 pp., £35, May 2001, 1 85410 763 1
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Lutyens Abroad 
edited by Andrew Hopkins and Gavin Stamp.
British School at Rome, 260 pp., £34.95, March 2002, 0 904152 37 5
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“... system of proportion to which all in his office alluded but no one could explain. When Robert Byron wrote his fine articles for Country Life in 1931 commemorating the achievement at New Delhi he noted that the meeting of classicism and the Orient was ‘a fusion, not of historical reminiscences, but of two schools of architectural thought. The ...”

Nutty Professors

Hal Foster: ‘Lingua Franca’, 8 May 2003

Quick Studies: The Best of ‘Lingua Franca’ 
edited by Alexander Star.
Farrar, Straus, 514 pp., $18, September 2002, 0 374 52863 2
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“... art experienced a similar boost with controversies over NEA funding of edgy artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano. Might the arts and the humanities be more efficacious than we thought, if not as dangerous as they thought? The increased attention also prompted several shootings-in-the-foot, as some young academics flaunted the new ...”

Why the richest woman in Britain changed her will 26 times

Mark Kishlansky: The Duchess of Marlborough, 14 November 2002

The Favourite: Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough 
by Ophelia Field.
Hodder, 575 pp., £20, June 2002, 9780340768075
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“... Though the Company was set up as a rival to the Whig Bank of England and her political enemy Sir Robert Harley initially supported it, Sarah did not let this put her off. But as shares rose dramatically, she began to believe that the bubble would burst and dumped her own shares, persuading Marlborough to do the same. They more than tripled their money. With ...”

Successive Applications of Sticking-Plaster

Andrew Saint: The urban history of Britain, 1 November 2001

The Cambridge Urban History of Britain. Vol. III: 1840-1950 
edited by Martin Daunton.
Cambridge, 944 pp., £90, January 2001, 0 521 41707 4
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“... patronising voluntary bodies. Now scholars are less sure. As regards transport and the utilities, Robert Millward points out that councils tended to buy out only enterprises which were in consistent profit, such as gas companies. Councillors’ motives were often not so much to provide an economic or efficient service overall as to relieve the rates ...”

Medes and Persians

Paul Foot: The Government’s Favourite Accountants, 2 November 2000

“... is now well placed to examine the financial relationship between Geoffrey Robinson of Transtec and Robert Maxwell, formerly of the Mirror. Both Arthur Andersen and Andersen Consulting have thrived under New Labour. One of their best moments came six months after the landslide when the long Government ban on Arthur Andersen was ended with a ‘negotiated ...”

Manufacturing in Manhattan

Eric Foner, 1 June 2000

Working-Class New York: Life and Labour Since World War Two 
by Joshua Freeman.
New Press, 393 pp., $35, May 2000, 1 56584 575 7
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“... in the country. Labour in the city reached the zenith of its power during the mayoralty of Robert Wagner Jr (son of the senator who had drafted the New Deal measure recognising workers’ right to collective bargaining) between 1954 and 1966. Elected with strong labour support, Wagner extended the right to unionise to municipal workers, and presided ...”

On with the Pooling and Merging

Neal Ascherson: The Incomparable Tom Nairn, 17 February 2000

After Britain: New Labour and the Return of Scotland 
by Tom Nairn.
Granta, 336 pp., £15.99, January 2000, 1 86207 293 0
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“... a strategy of decrepitude’). But he is also bewildered by Nairn’s long and enjoyable resort to Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities as a source of comparison. For Dewar, the parallels drawn with Musil’s disintegrating Austria-Hungary are ‘tendentious … who knows or cares?’ It may be a long novel for politicians with infernally little spare ...”

Part of the Fun of being an English Protestant

Patrick Collinson: Recovering the Reformation, 22 July 2004

Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490-1700 
by Diarmaid MacCulloch.
Allen Lane, 832 pp., £25, September 2003, 0 7139 9370 7
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“... conducted by the Jesuits in the Italian countryside were religious versions of carnival (just as Robert Burns, describing revivalist religion in 18th-century Ayrshire, wrote of ‘holy fairs’), and the missioners enjoyed the status of modern pop stars. But the more distant missions taken to the Americas and Asia were fatally compromised by the ‘European ...”

Vindicated!

David Edgar: The Angry Brigade, 16 December 2004

The Angry Brigade: The Cause and the Case 
by Gordon Carr.
ChristieBooks, 168 pp., £34, July 2003, 1 873976 21 6
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Granny Made Me an Anarchist 
by Stuart Christie.
Scribner, 423 pp., £10.99, September 2004, 0 7432 5918 1
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“... the accused has ever admitted to any specific acts, though Jake Prescott wrote to one bomb victim, Robert Carr, apologising for the attack on him (an apology graciously accepted), and John Barker has stated that ‘the police framed a guilty man.’ The convicted Anna Mendelson publishes poetry under another name and the acquitted Angela Weir became the ...”