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“... that a former propagandist should take their formal recitation of Leninist phrases at face value. Robert Service’s Lenin trilogy is a work of a very different kind. The final volume covering the period from the spring of 1918 to Lenin’s death has benefited from access to some of the sources used by Volkogonov, though far from all, which is a pity since ...”

“... in certain purification rites could be thrown outside the sanctuary of the god. Robert Parker is the first scholar to have considered all these different aspects of pollution, and to show how they relate to one another, and he does so without trying to impose on them a conceptual framework that would give priority either to the physical or ...”

“... stands aside from the general course of imaginative fiction. It is probably meant to do so. Robert Stone is also engaged with political disaster. His earlier novel Dog Soldiers was about the legacy of corruption left to America by the Vietnam War. In A Flag for Sunrise the theme is American incursion into the Third World. The scene is the small corrupt ...”

“... also true that a relief expedition has been hacking through textbook surveys for several decades. Robert Butts and Walter Cannon have called attention to the scientific and philosophical contributions of the ‘Cambridge Network’ – men like William Whewell, Adam Sedgwick, Charles Babbage, George Airy, John Herschel and John Henslow. Some half-dozen pieces ...”

“... seriously incapacitated by an injured knee which defied the surgical skill even of the eminent Sir Robert Jones, was still obliged to cook the omelettes, since her husband would accept them from nobody else. Edward Garnett, Conrad’s literary adviser and intimate friend from early in his career, observed that his ‘ultra-nervous organisation appeared to make ...”

“... until it becomes their proper nature. It is the same with writers and artists. Byron or David or Robert Lowell cannot slink off and become their ordinary selves in the intervals of being poets and painters and men of the age. Greta Garbo is always Greta Garbo, once she has found the part. But there is quite a different category of actor, as of ...”

“... of art, Gombrich turns his attention to the ceiling painting, an ‘Allegory of Truth’ by Robert Streeter. By a fortunate chance he has an ideal text ready to hand in a contemporary description of Streeter’s picture by Robert Whitehall, which ends with the words: That future ages must confess they owe To Streeter ...”

“... to illuminate their understanding of old familiar scenes. Among the professionals must be included Robert and Monica Beckinsale; among the self-confessed amateurs, Richard Muir. The Beckinsales – one native to the north Cots-wolds and the other to the Vale of the White Horse – present what is for them the English heartland. Richard Muir, nostalgic for the ...”

“... grain artificially high by restricting imports. In 1846, the laws were finally repealed by Sir Robert Peel. The entrenched political, social and economic power of those who owned land had, it appeared, succumbed before the enterprise and exertions of those who did not. Cobden did not lapse into complacency. The rest of his political life was devoted to ...”

“... my accursed temper and moodiness.’ Even so, it might be true of him, as Ian Hamilton wrote of Robert Frost, that ‘he knew his own failings, knew what the world would think of him if it found out, and yet believed the world was wrong.’ In this short selection of Edward Thomas’s letters George Thomas has aimed, he says, at reflecting the entire ...”

“... There are some curious aspects to Frank Lentricchia’s study of four Modernist poets: T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound and Wallace Stevens. For a start, it’s a book about poets which doesn’t seem much interested in poems. Lentricchia has written a lengthy chapter on each member of his quartet. Yet Eliot is represented by ‘The Love Song of J ...”

“... In​ 1824, a Scottish merchant called Robert Hunter was sailing down the Mekong when he saw what Yunte Huang describes as a ‘two-headed Hydra-like creature’ climbing into a dinghy. On closer inspection, Hunter was astonished to discover ‘not some amphibious reptile’ but two identical young boys connected at the chest by a thick band of flesh ...”

“... my father and married my mother – but would not be confined to it, and this is the kind of plot Robert Belknap is most interested in. He doesn’t neglect causality, but he likes it best when it goes what he calls ‘fractal’, when narrative turns take further turns, as ‘a fractal curve has kinks, and kinks on the kinks, and smaller kinks on those ...”

“... At first glance the new series was just as disconnected from public concerns. James Comey and Robert Mueller might be on people’s minds, but on Twin Peaks the salient FBI boss is still Gordon Cole, a hearing-impaired, gee-whizzily cryptic character played by Lynch himself. We first caught up with him in a conference room, where a subordinate showed him ...”

“... than early Pink Floyd – going on to produce a few grand creative talents in their own right. Robert Wyatt is the big survivor of the Soft Machine, a Hugo Ball at full lifespan to the band’s jaunty evocations of Dada. But there was also Daevid Allen, the founder of Gong, and Kevin Ayers, an eclectic-comic figure of some talent – in many ways the ...”