“... endless stories about politicians acting corruptly under pressure. In An Ideal Husband Sir Robert Chiltern has obtained the money which underpins his political career by disclosing a government secret when a young private secretary; and Mrs Cheveley tells Sir Robert that she will be in the gallery with his ...”

“... and Dudley Nichols’s idea of making Thieves like Us was taken up by Nicholas Ray in 1948 and by Robert Altman in 1974. All these stories, of course, were originally novels written by someone else, but we do get a sense that in Hollywood this process is less like recycling and more like playing a jazz standard, done with a certain amount of respect, or a ...”

“... the 1890s as newspaper sketch-artists in Philadelphia. Drawn together by the magnetic preaching of Robert Henri, a slightly older painter who had returned from art school in Paris to his native Philadelphia feverish with the spirit of Left Bank aesthetic revolt, they coalesced into a dissident brotherhood dedicated to an art which championed the contemporary ...”

“... widely read. Yonge’s The Heir of Redclyffe (1853) was a phenomenal bestseller, while Ward’s Robert Elsmere (1888) has a good claim to be the greatest commercial success of the 19th century. But their reputations have not worn well, and this, too, helps to neutralise some of the hazards of Sanders’s territory. Since modern admiration and attention have ...”

“... his readers through a particular poem. Valéry, Allen Tate, William Empson, John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren and Robert Lowell were instructive in that way. But it is rare for a poet to lead readers through a poem, draft by draft, or explain how he settled for one word rather than another. Yeats did not offer to ...”

“... better part of a year, and his John Adams (2001) is providing an astonishing repeat performance. Robert Caro’s dramatically detailed look at The Years of Lyndon Johnson has been unfolding since 1982, and large chunks of Volume Three have been serialised in the New Yorker. In the meantime, Robert Dallek scooped him with ...”

“... some part of their careers is impressive. It includes J.V. Cunningham, Thom Gunn, Donald Davie and Robert Pinsky, all of whom have paid tribute to his teaching. Many of them went further in the direction of Modernism than Winters would have liked. Davie, for example, spent much of his life championing Pound, yet nearly all his books include approving ...”

“... Reich. There is, however, one final ironic twist to that conjunction, which is brought out by Robert Proctor’s remarkable study of The Nazi War on Cancer. Proctor, the author of an earlier account of the Nazi racial hygiene crimes, now provides an astonishing – and entirely unapologetic – history of the reverse side of the coin. Without in any way ...”

“... of this antagonism towards Aristotle appears in both Brian Clegg’s Brief History of Infinity and Robert and Ellen Kaplan’s The Art of the Infinite. Clegg writes that Aristotle ‘made a distinction on the matter of infinity that was to prove useful, but also was a fudge that made it possible to avoid the real issue for a couple of thousand years’. And ...”

“... done.’ Brown’s prosecution, ‘the first modern courtroom event’, is one of five cases that Robert Ferguson examines in The Trial in American Life. As Ferguson points out, America’s courtroom dramas have always done more than transform the reputation of the person at their centre: They also satisfy revenge, purge communal resentments, assign limits ...”

“... figure, and in Anthony Munday’s Robin Hood play within a play, The Downfall and Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, a ‘real-life’ Skelton takes the role of Friar Tuck. His recovery came on the back of the rise of Modernism, with its opening of readers’ minds to new kinds of non-traditional poetry, and it was confirmed with the appearance of ...”

“... a cartoon version of what Philip Roth called ‘the indigenous American berserk’. The hero of J. Robert Lennon’s fourth novel is a postal carrier, a loner in late middle age, moderately disgruntled, deranged to an uncertain extent – raising concerns that he will storm his place of work with a shotgun before the novel is through. But Albert Lippincott ...”

“... spell in Newgate Prison, a substantial fine and three sessions in the public pillory, but Robert Harley, a member of the administration that had prosecuted him, recognised that such a gifted journalist might prove useful in government service. The administration arranged for his fine to be paid via an intermediary out of secret service funds. Defoe ...”

“... London in the late Twenties finds himself over sixty years later an American citizen, described by Robert Fagles as ‘arguably the finest Classicist of our day’, by Peter Green as one his nation ‘ought to bronze’, and by Jasper Griffin as a man ‘one would like to have as a friend’. In his long career he has written on many subjects: scholarly ...”

“... A black man on a white horse shall chase the redskins away. It’s the dignity at Appomattox of Robert E. Lee Live from Phoenix on TV. That old white warrior John McCain gracefully concedes. Nobly gives the nation what it needs. A thousand years from now, you know it, This day will be remembered, poet. By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining ...”