“... letters’ in an antique shop in Arezzo. Whether 19th-century or 21st, the tale has echoes of Robert Browning’s discovery in Florence in June 1860, at the market in the Piazza di San Lorenzo, of a collection of documents relating to a Roman murder case from 1698. ‘The old yellow book’, as Browning came to refer to it, formed the basis of his ...”

“... and the dancers and choreographers in The Red Shoes – Moira Shearer, Léonide Massine and Robert Helpmann – play versions of themselves. Pressburger based the character of Lermontov on Diaghilev, but it also has elements of the imperious Korda, as well as both himself and Powell. ‘I live cinema,’ Powell told the French director Bertrand ...”

“... them as a robust prediction of relativity. Among the most important clarifications came from J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was teaching theoretical physics at Berkeley in the 1930s when he and a graduate student, Hartland Snyder, worked out what would happen to a star after it exhausted its nuclear fuel. With no more outward-directed pressure coming from ...”

“... enthusiastically about a range of artists of his own generation – from Paolozzi and Ed Ruscha to Robert Smithson and Ikko Narahara – as well as about younger figures including Tacita Dean and the Chapman brothers. His perspective was wildly idiosyncratic (he regretted that ‘no one ever … has an erection’ in the presence of a Damien Hirst) and his ...”

“... political discourse could be challenged and altered. In 1999 Brown was furious with the journalist Robert Peston for describing that year’s Budget as ‘seriously redistributive’ in the Financial Times. ‘Why did you write that?’ he asked Peston. ‘It was profoundly unhelpful.’ This anxious refusal to make the case for a more equal country meant that ...”

“... report of 1868, produced for Seward by the former Mississippi senator and ardent expansionist Robert J. Walker, suggested ‘the propriety of obtaining from the same power Greenland, and probably Iceland also’. Walker extolled Iceland’s mild climate, many rivers, wealth of fisheries and agriculture, as well as its obsidian, lignite and sulphur mines ...”

“... and Making History (1984), consolidated his critical standing, earning plaudits from John Peel and Robert Christgau.Johnson​ has maintained that ‘writing poetry or making music … is not a substitute for hardcore political activism.’ But his poetry was intertwined with that activism: he drew inspiration from the anti-racist movement and chronicled ...”

“... winner’). In 1971, two years after visiting Universe 25 for National Geographic, the journalist Robert Conly published the popular children’s book Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, which was partly inspired by Calhoun’s research.Calhoun’s ideas seem to have become even wilder towards the end of his life, though all three authors are too polite to say ...”

“... end – or their end. Four of them – Blunden, Owen, Read and Sassoon – won the Military Cross. Robert Graves’s hard saying might stand as their watchword: ‘the only way out of the war is the way through it.’ Intellectually, they had much in common with pacifist Bloomsbury, but they had bound themselves to a separate caste and remained faithful to its ...”

“... the story’s most appealing character, a refugee from the works of Calvino’s favourite writer, Robert Louis Stevenson: Dr Trelawney it is who performs the operation. This is a happy ending, but for the story’s youthful narrator it is also the moment of childhood’s end: Dr Trelawney, the tippling medic, leaves on a British ship, ‘hitched on board ...”

“... ineffectiveness was partly caused by ineffective leaders. Where was the Labor equivalent of Sir Robert Menzies – a man of great physical presence and even greater political cunning? The answer, when it finally came, was Gough Whitlam. He was a man of commanding height, a middle-class barrister like Menzies, a skilled debater, supremely self-confident, a ...”

“... the inevitable Henry Kissinger, Mr Moon, Vice-President Bush and the President of the World Bank, Robert McNamara. More serious was the realisation that the antique-dealer, Deverini, who was accused of having helped Gelli to enter Monaco illegally, had earlier been accused of murder. It was remembered, too, that a Colonel Salvatore Florio, who had once ...”

“... I haven’t found anybody interesting yet. There are not many young people and the small ‘Robert’ (who calls himself ‘Wob’) doesn’t mind accepting a box of bricks (bought at the barber’s) from me but he doesn’t want me to help to play with ’em. I tried yesterday. ‘Wob’ stood it as long as he could. Then he screwed up his face, and ...”

“... writers and critics came and went. Literature was a vocation in those days, not a profession. For Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Delmore Schwartz and Randall Jarrell, disciples of those exemplary teacher-critics John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate, criticism was an essential component of a literary career. And for the critics, the obverse was true: Lionel ...”

“... the Drudge Report but against America Online, Drudge’s Internet service provider. It’s as if Robert Maxwell had gone for W.H.Smith in his vendetta against Private Eye. The discovery phase of the suit is due to be completed by mid-October. Both Clinton and Gore are reported to be cheering on Blumenthal’s action. One would not expect Matt Drudge to find ...”