“... They use technology unrecognisable to their forefathers, but the deep processes go back to the Stone Age and the first farmers. How is this possible? How have so many thriving practices fallen to the globalisation formula of ‘other countries do what you do better/more cheaply, so you might as well give up,’ while farming, an activity thousands of years ...”

“... and the Danube basin were for a long time privileged zones – the terrains of St John Philby and Robert Byron, of Norman Douglas and Patrick Leigh-Fermor, of R.W.Seton-Watson and Rebecca West. Sorties farther afield – like Peter Fleming’s expeditions to the Gobi or Matto Grosso – were fewer. Paradoxically, the vast expanse of the Empire itself was not ...”

“... centre. Through Hunt, Keats met Shelley, Godwin, Wordsworth, Hazlitt, Lamb, the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, and many others who would challenge and comfort him, patronise and defend him, feud over and around him, get drunk and silly with him, delight and disgust him, and otherwise matter to him during this period of explosive poetic growth in what were ...”

“... of 1955, one remembered in Scotland for its long procession of warm and cloudless days. We climbed stone stairs and looked into bare stone rooms. It was tremendously dull. Everything of interest lay outside. I was ten and keen on ships, and through dusty windows I could see a much more attractive world, and hear it, too ...”

“... published in 2009 to mark the fortieth anniversary of Cottam power station in Nottinghamshire, Robert Davis quotes one of the employees: There was so much wastage during the CEGB days. It was like they had money to burn. The stores were always full and we had spares for everything. Bureaucracy was part of the problem. If you signed stuff out of the ...”

“... is the second part of a two-part interview. Part 1: ‘You Muddy Fools’ I want to ask you about Robert Lowell: as an influence on your work, that is, and only then as what he later became – a ‘Life’, the subject of your first full-length biography. You did and do admire him greatly as a poet, yet in his poetic practice didn’t he trample all over the ...”

“... thinking a thatched roof was the height of exotic. Everything changed for me with the discovery of Robert Burns: those torn-up fields out there were his fields, those bulldozed farms as old as his words, both old and new to me then. Burns was ever a slave to the farming business: he is the patron saint of struggling farmers and poor soil. But in actual ...”

“... to her Cornwall habits in the cold and windy north: wearing silk dresses and clipping around the stone floors in her pattens. We meet Tabby and the other servants, the curates and the local families with whom the Brontës interacted. The Diary Papers introduce all their beloved pets; cats and dogs (Keeper, Grasper, Rainbow, Diamond, Snowflake, Flossy, Black ...”

“... that he did what was important to make my parents happy … going to St Joe’s Prep, a stepping stone to a good career and all that. Whereas I did what made me happy. John was more focused. He didn’t want to share the glory, neither would I – if you’re gonna play baseball, you wanna be the pitcher. If you’re gonna do crew, you want to be in a single ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... and Kerr-Bell suggest, however, that the TMO became more intermeshed with the council under Robert Black, who was chief executive at the time of the refurbishment. ‘He instilled a culture where you couldn’t complain,’ I was told. I contacted Black, trying to get him to respond to this allegation, but he preferred not to. The Grenfell Action ...”

“... 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 ...”