“... and travel providing most of the plot-line, and only the odd puzzle or mystery to liven up the day. Sixteen-year-old Nancy Drew, who made her literary debut in 1929, was the first real sleuth in the series books. Even in 1933, in the depths of the Depression, Macy’s sold six thousand Nancy Drews at Christmas, and they had sold sixty million copies ...”

“... anti-Soviet poet Georgy Ivanov – Irma Kudrova’s biography of Tsvetaeva will see the light of day. In the meantime, there are biographies of Tsvetaeva in languages other than Russian. In 1981, Maria Razumovsky, the Viennese translator of Tsvetaeva’s poetry, brought out Marina Zwetajewa: Mythos und Wahrheit, a study of the poet’s life. In 1983, an ...”

“... men in big glasses chop-chop-chopping with a chisel until a perfect mortice joint emerged. ‘Fine day, Mr Aikman. Everybody satisfied wi’ the boat? No a great looker, but she doesnae have to be. This your grandson? Great-nephew. You want tae be a shipbuilder too, son.’ The sense of a command in that, most of a lifetime ago. The Grangemouth Dockyard was ...”

“... on the subject and some have been no less alarmed by what they have seen in the chapel itself. Robin Richmond’s Michelangelo and the Creation of the Sistine Chapel is a popular introduction which will rightly enrage anyone who has been alarmed. ‘I grew up in Rome and was so familiar with Michelangelo that I never questioned whether his work looked now ...”

“... happened behind the scenes in September 2015. The most compelling account is Die Getriebenen by Robin Alexander, a correspondent for the conservative paper Die Welt. He was given intimate access to Merkel’s entourage, and offers an unsparing portrait of the German political class as it struggled to cope with the crisis, largely by refusing to take ...”

“... near-sighted, young Bucky loved to sail and invented a new kind of oar. His childhood hero was Robin Hood, perhaps because his father’s death had impoverished the family. When he reached Harvard, he was snubbed by his wealthier classmates, cut classes, squandered his allowance by inviting a line of chorus girls to dinner, and was thrown out twice. After ...”

“... Smith loved these lines by an unnamed satirist: Hush, hush, it couldn’t be worse Christopher Robin is having his nurse. And they make some peculiar gestures towards imaginative analysis. Stevie Smith’s mother once won a prize for a short story in a local Eisteddfod: Barbera and McBrien say that her daughter’s literary career could be seen as an ...”

“... too hard to make you forget that she’s performing; the effect is like reading a gossipy round-robin email from a tremendously entertaining and well-read person you’d have no qualms about hanging with but might think twice about bothering if she was making notes. ‘How does someone with no real academic aspirations end up spending seven years in ...”

“... How sane, how wise!’ I am the mirror where your image moves, Neat and obedient twin, until one day It moves before you move; and it is you Who have to ape its moods and motions, who Must now obey. That’s Tessimond’s take on the popular press, and like his poems on advertising and money and the silver screen and the various types who feature in his ...”

“... of history to please the patriarchy, I’ll move to Canada’), along with a grand tirade by Robin Morgan, a reprise of her 1970 essay ‘Goodbye to All That’: How dare anyone unilaterally decide when to turn the page on history, papering over real inequities and suffering constituencies in the promise of a feel-good campaign? How dare anyone claim to ...”

“... from each of Shakespeare’s plays. This is Stratford-upon-Avon on the weekend after 23 April, a day celebrated since the 18th century as Shakespeare’s Birthday. As Park Honan’s impressive new biography reminds us, the parish records for 1564 make it certain only that he was christened on 26 April, and our knowledge of contemporary church practice ...”

“... labels are flypapers.10 March. I read the Sunday papers first thing, otherwise they hang about all day like an unmade bed. I find less and less in them to read and feel like somebody stood against a wall while a parade goes by. An article in the Garden, the journal of the Royal Horticultural Society: ‘Making Sense of the Celandine’.11 March. Depressed by ...”

“... her mother told of Fa Mu Lan. In a less diluted Water Margin epic, she is a kind of Maid Marian as Robin Hood (‘My army did not rape, only taking food where there was an abundance. We brought order wherever we went’), or a female avenger, at times a Bruce Lee in drag. She defeats a giant, who changes into his true shape, a snake – whereupon his disgusted ...”

“... write. Sometimes historical proxies or punning nicknames could stand in. Wolsey, Sejanus and ‘Robin’ were all used to characterise Walpole as an ambitious upstart, heading for a fall. More often, names were gutted or (as Henry Fielding put it) ‘emvowelled’, with dashes or asterisks replacing key letters or every character except the first. This ...”

“... Time was the artist Joseph Nash, not the architect John; the authority on Hadrian’s Wall is Robin Birley, not Robert; William III’s historiographer was Thomas Rymer, not Edward; it was in the ruins of the Capitol, not the Colosseum, that Gibbon conceived the idea of the Decline and Fall; and Rothesay is not an island. It would be wrong, however, to ...”