“... a return of sorts to the day before the meeting with Pascal, when she encountered Lucien’s uncle Robert, who may be planning something sexual for her, then a brief shower, and at last she’s off to her meeting, back in the narrative present. I wish I could say there is a reason for any of this, but I was left with the impression that Kushner had groped her ...”

“... down (the queen raised a £25 compensation fund from her loyal subjects), and three years later Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, had his Italian pyrotechnician pull out the stops at Kenilworth in a final, futile bid to win Elizabeth’s heart.Her successor, James I, was also a firework fan, despite or perhaps because of the fact that he narrowly escaped ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... One was for Ferdinando Wainman, a member of the Virginia Governor’s Council; another for Robert Hunt, the church’s first minister and chaplain of the expedition that founded Jamestown. Hunt was an Anglican, naturally, given that the town was established in 1607 not just as a commercial plantation and trading post, but as a bulwark of Protestant ...”

“... not many Surrealists were active in the Resistance. Éluard participated, as did the poet Robert Desnos, who was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 and died a year later at Theresienstadt. Another committed Surrealist was Claude Cahun (née Lucy Schwob), whose marvellous anti-memoir of texts and photomontages, Aveux non avenus, has appeared in a new ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... not astoundThe virtuous mind.Indeed I also find myself reflecting rather sadly about a couplet of Robert Louis Stevenson. It is what has been so often attacked in later years as child-cult, the literary man pretending to be a child to make himself look sweet: but I think the people who attacked this didn’t recognise the merit of the child cult when it is ...”

“... makes the scene even more touching. 6 February. I am reading a history of the Yorkshire Dales by Robert White, one of a series, Landscape through Time, published by English Heritage. During the enclosures of the 18th and 19th centuries, most of the land enclosed was added to existing farms, but in 1809 John Hulton used the land allotted to him from the ...”

“... tries to rise to as a correspondent, giving exquisite elegies for old friends like Mrs Kemble and Robert Louis Stevenson; even the noble, scrupulous and harrowing account of his loved sister’s last days and hours is improved by an altered phrase. Some things probably came near to defeating him, though he records them desperately. Professor Edel chooses to ...”

“... of his country in the aftermath of the Nicaraguan earthquake. Winding it up came a warning from Robert Bork against the menace of the ‘clerisy of power’ now (under the Ford Presidency) steering the nation towards the shoals of equality and uniformity. The following bumper issue of the National Review, on 5 December, was mainly taken up with the text of ...”

“... glory of the century of progress. A White Star Line poster reproduced in Michael Wilkinson and Robert Hamilton’s collection shows the great hulk of the ship, sunlit, belching smoke out of three of its four funnels – the fourth was there only for effect – and cutting a swathe between a small sailing ship and a three-masted square rigger. A sliver of ...”

“... with some of the older children. In Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens, Robert Gottlieb quotes the letter in which Dickens explains to his wife what happened: ‘Presently, we heard them come back and say to each other with some alarm: “Why, the gate’s shut, and they are all gone!” Ally began in a dismayed way to cry out, but ...”

“... did Egypt’s usefulness in ‘extraordinary renditions’. In the words of the CIA agent Robert Baer, ‘If you wanted to make someone disappear – never to return – you sent him to Egypt.’) Suleiman is a redoubtable figure, but nothing he has said or done suggests a yearning for political reform. Nor is it clear that he is willing take over ...”