“... they concluded, was a far more important factor in Nkrumah’s ideological make-up. Later, it was Roger Hollis of MI5 who brought the unwelcome news to the government of the ill-fated Central African Federation that Soviet communism wasn’t the threat in their part of Africa that they liked to paint it, mainly in order to get American support. This is not ...”

“... see the significance of the huge amount of native activity, for which the evidence is assembled in Roger Fiske’s excellent English Theatre Music in the 18th Century (1973). One reason for the failure of Italian opera in London was doubtless that it came too late. In the 1720s the orderly, poetic Metastasian opera was becoming the rage throughout Italy, led ...”

“... Rebellion regarding the politics of civil disobedience. He recommended a YouTube lecture by Roger Hallam, in which the XR co-founder explains that relatively small acts of protest can tip an entire society. Sometimes it just takes tens of thousands of people to refuse to comply with the status quo for tens of millions to reject it. (This is presumably a ...”

“... and William Roberts – and a revolutionary moment in British art. Even to express support for Roger Fry’s Post-Impressionist exhibitions was daring and radical. Nevinson, having seen a contemporary art show in Venice, knew he was ‘bored with the old Masters’. He was ambitious and keen to be liked, but socially ...”

“... be achieved, except with a hand mirror’), and made leery mock-bows at academic savants such as Roger Fry and Bernard Berenson (‘making us feel small, and breaking our heads for years with his “inis” and “iccios”’).This unflaggingly stylish and ebullient performance drew on a well-stocked wardrobe of roles. Early appearances regularly featured ...”

“... I acquired was called The Love Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, and had a biographical preface by Roger Ingpen. It was a reprint of Mary’s letters to her lover Gilbert Imlay, first published by Godwin among her posthumous works, and then by Kegan Paul in 1879. Ingpen wrote of her life and sufferings tenderly: ‘Pathetic and lonely, she stands out in the ...”

“... This is certainly true of his Cicely Alexander and Carlyle portraits, and one is astonished that Roger Fry could have said that his painting ‘lacked humanity’ and could see no more than pure abstract design in the mountainous and disturbing outline of the overcoat and hat in the Carlyle. Where Whistler’s outlook grows more dubious is in his ...”

“... exploitation of his private domain were only beginning to emerge, through the effort of men like Roger Casement and E.D. Morel, at the time of Stanley’s death. Stanley’s last expedition, to relieve Emin Pasha in 1888, brought out the best and the worst in him. Politically, he was playing a deep game, serving at least two ...”

“... we learn the most from their personal memories, experiences, opinions. Do I claim to sit with the Masters? Yes, I do. His conflation of the historian’s mastery of ideas with an artist’s mastery of his craft is typical. But it would be a poor spirit who could mark the book down on rational analysis and ignore its proper virtues. If we can’t altogether ...”

“... tentatively exploit – Ben-Amos records cases of skilled apprentices extorting wages from their masters by a threat to withdraw labour, and careful calculation of how much they brought in and how much they took out. There was also a temptation for the apprentice to extend his (or, this time, her) term for a couple of years to make immediate money in order ...”

“... and Maclean for their getaway on 25 May 1951? Peter Wright, of course, is convinced that he was Roger Hollis, Deputy Director-General and then Director-General of British counter-intelligence. But he, too, loses himself in the wilderness of mirrors, and Spycatcher for me does not prove the case. Mr Brook-Shepherd, on the other hand, is adamant that Hollis ...”

“... at the other end. In some cases, the analogy with slavery continued, and they ran away from their masters, even wearing iron collars. The book includes pages of advertisements for these breakers of contracts, and the descriptions remind us how common then were visible physical defects, pock marks, scars, stiff joints, brand marks, ill-healed fractures. In the ...”

“... and accusations of the Revolutionary era to enjoy direct Hanoverian patronage from its Grand Masters, the Duke of Cumberland, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex. Robison’s work triggered an immediate panic in New England, which supported the conservative Federalists against the rising tide of democracy. In his Fourth of July address in ...”

“... and a humbug he was never quite sure how serious he was intending to be. When the Irish rebel Roger Casement was about to go on trial for the capital crime of high treason for his part in the Easter Rising of 1916, Shaw wrote a speech for him to read out in court in his own defence. The intention was that Casement, as O’Toole writes, ‘would literally ...”

“... his father-in-law’s death. But there were spectacular achievements in the earlier age, too. Roger Flor, leader of the Catalan companies that overran Frankish Greece, married into the Byzantine imperial family and was hailed in Constantinople with the title ‘Caesar’. Bertrand du Guesclin, the Breton adventurer who led a mixed host of French, Gascon ...”