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“... itself? The Complete Poems provides a capacious answer. The volumes have been superbly edited by Robert West and run to more than two thousand pages. There were moments when I felt – to borrow a line from one of the late poems – that ‘there’s too damn much of everything.’ But I also found myself wondering why Ammons isn’t read more outside the US ...”

“... is now writing a soon-to-be-bestselling crime novel with plenty of sex and murder. Her husband, Robert, often rudely called ‘Rob’ by unthinking friends, is a highly adapted commuting machine who works in Canary Wharf and times his drive to the station to perfection. She is interesting, he is not. And they have a child, Lanny, who is both interesting and ...”

“... are audibly mapped.There are also thousands of memorable moments, some distinguished by hindsight (Robert Maxwell declaring: ‘I will have left the world a slightly better place by having lived in it’), some by the way radio forefronts every tic, hesitation and obfuscation, and some by personal revelation. In 2020, as Covid added a piquancy to the ...”

“... wrong, you’re facing more than just your opponent. In a match against Korchnoi, Spassky wore a green eyeshade and sat at a distance from the table in order to thwart Korchnoi’s mind-bending rays. During the Reykjavik match, the Russians dismantled Spassky’s chair to find out if it had been tampered with by the Americans. In chess mythology, the ...”

“... without being confined to them. But larger centres have their filmographies too: Marseille in Robert Guédiguian’s movies; Bordeaux in Moderato cantabile, Nice in Baie des anges; Lyon in Melville’s L’Armée des ombres; Lille in Zonca’s La Vie rêvée des anges. In such cases, the location of novels and films is precise and explicit, each accorded ...”

“... of David Cornwell, the former spy who has written under that curious pseudonym since 1961. Robert Harris chose not to proceed, for reasons that are hinted at but not made clear in this book, while in the early 1990s the journalist Graham Lord withdrew under a heavy legal barrage, after circulating an allegedly libellous proposal for his book. ‘I ...”

“... Marthe Bibesco, whom he got to know better. Runciman asked this other princess ‘with huge green eyes … well-suited to the brush of Boldini’ if she would show him Romania and his letter of thanks after that visit strikes a rare note of sincerity and gratitude for ‘three weeks of enjoyment and interest such as I have never experienced ...”

“... for back-up, Tensing pulls in behind DuBose, who has stopped his car on Rice St, a pleasant green road outside the university campus. Tensing walks to the car, and the men have a seemingly amiable conversation. The officer is insistent but polite, DuBose vague and indistinct (at one point, he hands over a small bottle of gin). Tensing, addressing DuBose ...”

“... and mauve, black and white stars’, and that a semi-tone higher it suggests ‘pale, prairie-green foliage, with patches of blue, silver and reddish orange’. The composition might suggest these things, but surely not the mere mode it uses. But even if this was partly a tease (when Claude Samuel reacted with astonishment to some of his ...”

“... four children, on 6 January 1916, three months before the Easter Rebellion, in which her father, Robert Brennan, served as a commandant in the Irish Volunteers. Following the surrender ordered by Pearse, he was sentenced first to death and then to penal servitude for life but was released soon after and went on to organise the Department of External Affairs ...”

“... as, for example, in his demonstration in the House of Commons after the assassination of the Rev. Robert Bradford and his subsequent call for a campaign of passive disobedience to force the British out. Of necessity, the leap of faith is informed or sustained by an idea of martyrdom. Paisley comments that Christ makes frequent references to his death as ...”

“... Invisible ink … Trampolines/aniseed sweets/painted eggs. Pencil sharpenings? Magic Faraway, Robert the something, Robert the Rose Horse?’ The bereaved man is convinced by this performance, even marginally consoled: ‘Thank you Crow.’ ‘All part of the service.’ ‘Really. Thank you, Crow.’ ‘You’re ...”

“... Security Council responsible for covert operations, had given the CIA station in Léopoldville the green light and wired Devlin $100,000 to finish the job.Kennedy’s​ arrival in the White House signalled a shift in American foreign policy. As a senator he had been critical of France’s undeclared war in Algeria. Now he shocked the Washington establishment ...”

“... was parked described it. What I remember is seeing flashing lights of all colours: red, blue, green and a horrendous noise that actually went right down into your body. But there was like a vacuum after that, there was silence and then all of a sudden there was this swishing sound and everything just went berserk … and then we saw it in its full ...”

“... the bath. My mother’s family, the Peels, descendants, so Mam’s sister Lemira claimed, of Sir Robert Peel, had once been well-to-do, owning mills in Halifax. The youngest of the three sisters, Aunty Myra was the keeper of the family flame, determined that if her present did not amount to much, a sales assistant in White’s Gown Shop in Briggate living in ...”