“... binding acts nowadays as a warning signal to look more closely at the contents of his morocco.’ Robert Riviere outforged Thomas Wise by at least a hundred to one. The only other distinction to be made between them is in the nebulous sphere of intention. The binder did not actively intend to deceive, merely to repair (although perusal of the stock and ...”

“... available for free) to credulous operatives from the Stasi and the KGB; finally Robert Morris, a genuine sorcerer’s apprentice who more or less accidentally more or less shut down North America. I call in at the newest local arcade for a fix and update. And find an oddly-slanted world-view with gigabytes lavished on witless ...”

“... of meaning (at its most flagrant in a poem like ‘Litany’) and the intense emotional charge of Robert Lowell’s ‘gaming with words’ (Jonathan Raban’s phrase). Intelligently controlled chance, as instanced also by the paintings of Bacon and the films of Godard, can even be seen as the defining characteristic of a richly textured, richly responsible ...”

“... does he find a curious sub-genre of conceptual art, as in certain works-on-paper by Les Levine and Robert Morris which in effect are, as well as are of, financial instruments Further examples: a joke cheque by Duchamp with which he paid a dentist’s bill, or a ten D-mark bill on which Joseph Beuys writes ‘Kunst = KAPITAL,’ and signs it, giving it a value ...”

“... ratio is obscenely favourable, even by pre-Robbins Oxbridge standards. Caltech still lives by Robert A. Millikan’s rule that you cannot expect good research from a professor who teaches more than four hours a week. When George Ellery Hale founded the institution in Pasadena, one of his motives was the high concentration of retired millionaires in the ...”

“... have produced any better or more effective public servants than Oliver Franks, Edwin Plowden, Robert Hall, Edward Bridges, Alec Cairncross, Edward Hall-Patch, Richard Hopkins and Roger Makins, to name only a few of the ‘mandarins’ who served the Labour Government so loyally. Therein lay the problem, however. They did what their Labour masters ...”

“... opinion at the tune. The author clearly documents the radical difference opinion on Suez between Robert Menzies and his Minister for External Affairs, R.G. Casey, whose public notoriety so astonished Lord Carrington when he arrived in the middle of the crisis to take up his post as British High Commissioner. I am not sure that the title gives quite the ...”

“... corroboration of the great conspiracy against goodness. Almost as monstrous is the film’s use of Robert Kennedy’s assassination as a mere item in Garrison’s self-vindication and patched-up private life. It proves he was right about everything, and it regains him (immediately) his wife’s love and respect and sexual favours. Amazing how useful public ...”

“... is another purpose to the book, aside from the obvious; Hughes’s big bang may be a distraction. Robert Frost once confided to his friend Sidney Cox that ‘I have written to keep the over-curious out of the secret places of my mind both in my verse and in my letters to such as you.’ With his verse and his letters it may be that Hughes, too, has satisfied ...”

“... we can do this depends not just on the conditions in which we die, but on how we have lived. Robert Maxwell probably departed this world in circumstances which, in any literal sense, made the whole notion of such performance quite irrelevant. But even if he had passed away in bed with all his faculties intact, it is doubtful that be would have been able ...”

“... recording their fashionable clothes, pink cheeks and languid arrogance. Some, like the master of Robert Burns’s ‘Twa Dogs’, had set out in a ‘frolic daft’ simply To make a tour an’ tak a whirl To learn bon ton and see the worl’. But the ostensible purpose of the Grand Tour – a term coined in the mid-century – was the completion of a ...”

“... creative urge, at its most interesting when most devious. He was certainly a double man. (Robert Louis Stevenson had perceptively commented on ‘the note of ambiguity and deceit’ which already ‘brooded over’ Taken from the Enemy.) And a more than Edwardian richness, as well as ambiguity, broods over Susan Chitty’s ...”

“... fear of stimulating anti-semitism turned Leo Frank into a gentile Yankee businessman. But Robert Rossen, the young Jewish Communist who adapted the story for the screen, didn’t forget what he saw as his own betrayal of the Jews. A decade later, directing the first Hollywood Jewish/black buddy film, Body and Soul, Rossen made the last shot of They ...”

“... the Atlantic Bridge lobbyist Adam Werritty, to official meetings; the current housing secretary, Robert Jenrick, remains in his job despite admitting ‘apparent bias’ in overturning a lucrative planning decision in favour of a Conservative donor he’d sat next to at a party fundraiser.Johnson has followed Cameron in promising to clean up Westminster but ...”

“... Lyndon Johnson was leaking news from National Security Council meetings. The defence secretary, Robert McNamara, who had initially advocated a moderate course, soon swung in line behind his uniformed colleagues, and gave the moronic authorisation for a nuclear-armed Soviet submarine to be bombarded with ‘practice’ depth charges.But Kennedy stayed the ...”