The Uncommon Reader

Alan Bennett, 8 March 2007

... travelled. Look it up.’ Norman looked it up in the Dictionary of Quotations to find that it was Robert Frost. ‘I know the word for you,’ said the Queen. ‘Maam?’ ‘You run errands, you change my library books, you look up awkward words in the dictionary and find me quotations. Do you know what you are?’ ‘I used to be a ...
... centralisation of economic affairs and government in an increasingly narrow group that may for all practical purposes be termed the national socialist elite’. The gung-ho free marketeers who rode to power with Thatcher in 1979 don’t seem to have been aware of the Nazi prelude, although they would have known of later privatisations in ...

Father! Father! Burning Bright

Alan Bennett, 9 December 1999

... always been a right keen smoker has Frank. Now he’s paying the price.’ Midgley fell asleep. ‘Robert Donat had bronchitis,’ said Aunty Kitty. ‘Mr Midgley.’ The doctor shook his shoulder. ‘Denis,’ said Aunt Kitty. ‘It’s doctor.’ He was a pale young Pakistani, and for a moment Midgley thought he had fallen asleep in class and was being woken ...

The Divisions of Cyprus

Perry Anderson, 24 April 2008

... of the puzzlement felt on this score in London,’ records the leading scholar of the subject, Robert Holland: ‘It remains … a notable fact that it was the British who, in the first instance, had to screw the Turks up to a pitch of excitement about Cyprus, not the other way round.’1 When the requisite excitement eventually came, London did not flinch ...

The Satoshi Affair

Andrew O’Hagan, 30 June 2016

... trouble, he approached Matthews several times. By that time, Matthews had become friendly with Robert MacGregor, the founder and CEO of a Canada-based money-transfer firm called nTrust. Matthews encouraged MacGregor to come to Australia and assess Wright’s value as an investment opportunity. Wright had founded a number of businesses that were in trouble ...