“... place as a pastime. It is not such a solemn affair, and yet, to be sure, it is serious. This is Paul Morphy, the American genius, writing to his mother in 1858 about the ambience of the then world champion, Howard Staunton, an editor of Shakespeare who refused to play Morphy. On hearing of the American’s rumoured madness, Staunton says: Well, well. One ...”

“... she radically undermines traditional masculine values. In another centenary study, however, John Robinson insists that she is a timeless lyric poet whose work is not ‘centrally representative of women’. Robinson’s refusal to consider Dickinson’s polemical and subversive imagination is disappointing, but it can be ...”

“... Max Steiner, the master of Hollywood’s soupiest, most soothing sound. Now, Voyager is famous for Paul Henreid’s cigarette trick – he sticks two in his mouth, lights both, and gives one to Davis – and for her final line: ‘Oh, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We’ve already got the stars.’ But we could think of it as an example of what ...”

“... employed a bevy of refugee leftist intellectuals like Marcuse, Franz Neumann, Otto Kirkheimer and Paul Baran. Recent books include poignant accounts like Gabrielle Edgcomb’s From Swastika to Jim Crow, about the sixty-odd German Jewish professors who found refuge at black colleges in the American South. According to Claus-Dieter Krohn, a quarter of the ...”

“... David Spiegelhalter, now Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge, and Paul Aylin, now the assistant director of the Dr Foster Unit at Imperial College. You might think that their task was relatively straightforward. After all, the figure that matters here, the mortality rate, is simply the number of patients who died after ...”

“... neatly with Letwin’s final eulogy on the condition, patterning the ideal, not on Newcome, but on Robinson Crusoe: ‘What defines a gentleman is a way of being in any circumstances. Even alone on his island, Robinson Crusoe is a gentleman. He reveals a gentleman’s attitude to his plight in his unfailing respect for the ...”

“... Stravinsky debonair in double-breasted suit photographed in Los Angeles by his friend Edward G. Robinson; a merry Stravinsky at a recording session (of The Rake’s Progress), one hand holding a cigarette, the other in conjunction with a whisky bottle. The implacability of the man stays stamped on his photographed features till the end – strongly marked ...”

“... spurred on by the medical profession, set out to curb the tobacco industry. They were Kenneth Robinson and David Owen (Labour) and Sir George Young (Tory). All three were routed. The hardest fighter of the three was Sir George Young. His determination to cut down, for instance, on tobacco’s sponsorship of sports made him unpopular in those parts of the ...”

“... have written about Beethoven’s heroic middle period – most recently, Scott Burnham, but also Paul Robinson, for whom Fidelio is a relatively uncomplicated enactment of the French Revolution – can see nothing except the triumphalism with which he appears to end these works. If we look a bit more closely at Fidelio, however, keeping its incorporated ...”

“... Press has been publishing Burke’s writings and speeches under the overall editorship of Paul Langford, the first systematically new edition since that compiled between 1792 and 1827. No one reading these genuinely engrossing volumes can doubt the calibre of Burke’s mind, the power of his language, or the enduring pungency of his political ...”

“... Spanish Earth but includes much film noir, while finding its ultimate expression in Citizen Kane. Paul Robeson isn’t the only headline performer: he is supported by Billie Holliday and even Duke Ellington. Indeed, Denning argues that because ‘Pop Frontism’ was less a particular worldview than a set of emotional responses, Elia Kazan can be seen as ...”

“... of the corporations but now slavishly supporting them goes on and on throughout the book: Geoffrey Robinson who, as Paymaster General, defended the PFI proposals (and the loss of beds) for Walsgrave Hospital in his constituency, and then, when he lost office, rediscovered his opposition to the plan; Alastair Darling, who in opposition denounced the failure to ...”

“... Listen to Jeffrey Robinson, American biographer of figures such as Sheikh Yamani, describing how he goes to work: What I usually do is get two or three months’ research under my belt before I go to see the guy. He may say: ‘I don’t want this biography.’ I say to him: ‘That is not one of your options. This book is going to be written, I have a publisher and I’m getting near being able to write something ...”

“... the grief that poisons his heart’ – the layers of meaning seemed to fold back on themselves. Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem ‘We Wear the Mask’ was still very famous; minstrelsy was still a going concern. What did it mean for black Americans to sing arias about clowns who cried beneath their made-up faces? And what did it mean that, in order to do ...”

“... true art needs no incentive; its work is its own reward.’ Annie Swynnerton was born Anne Louisa Robinson in Manchester in 1844, one of the four daughters of a legal clerk and his wife. She went to Manchester Art School in 1871, as did her sisters Emily and Julia, where they were all prize-winning students, though frustrated by the scope of the tuition ...”