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“... mother also made a somewhat pitiable fuss of her Virginia roots and claimed to be descended from Robert E. Lee. When her marriage began to fall apart, she made it her mission to educate Allen and his brothers in the details of her family history, taking them repeatedly on visits to ancestral sites and introducing them to ancient relatives. On one ...”

“... would do well not to ask any questions about motivation. On Carla’s Song, he gave the actor Robert Carlyle a run-down of his character. ‘Your name’s George and you drive a bus. Maybe it would be a good idea if you learned to drive a bus.’ Had Loach stuck with theatre directing – an early pursuit – he would by now be bringing his plays to ...”

“... like the hapless charioteer in the terrifying simile that closes the first book of the Georgics. Robert Fagles comes to the task of translating the Aeneid with a lifetime of experience as a translator behind him, but the Aeneid is the first Latin text he has translated.* Until now he has worked on Greek texts, and is particularly admired for his translations ...”

“... When​ Donald Trump nominated Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon, as secretary of state, Robert McNally found the choice unremarkable. ‘The closest thing we have to a secretary of state outside government is the CEO of Exxon,’ he said. McNally is an energy consultant, a former adviser to George W. Bush, Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio, and a member of the National Petroleum Council ...”

“... The Compleat Drawing-Book​, published by Fleet Street printseller Robert Sayer in 1755, is a handbook for the amateur artist that aims to provide ‘Proper Instructions to Youth for their Entertainment and Improvement in this Art’. The core of the book is a series of ‘Many and Curious Specimens’: prints from images ‘engrav’d on one hundred copper-plates’ that present vignettes to study and copy ...”

“... is a woolly conceit, almost a faith. Proof isn’t required. A Brighton film of two years earlier, Robert Hamer’s delightfully sinister Pink String and Sealing Wax, set, to judge by the costumes, in the 1880s, does indeed have ‘Victorianism’ written all over it, as does Hamer’s subsequent Kind Hearts and Coronets. But neither of these is scrutinised by ...”

“... racism. Her father is a preacher in Memphis; Jack’s father is a preacher in Iowa: he is the Robert Boughton we’re introduced to in Gilead (2004), the first novel in the series, the broken-hearted apologist for his irredeemably wayward son. The fact that the characters live on either side of a racial divide is less important to their conversation in ...”

“... to the posthumous publication in 1680 of Patriarcha by the early 17th-century royalist Sir Robert Filmer, which claimed that absolute monarchy derived from the paternal authority that Adam and subsequent biblical fathers exercised over their families and servants.More recently, scholars have slightly qualified Laslett’s findings, pushing the ...”

“... Not while Rupert’s still around. And while Rupert’s still around (and Sir James, and Robert, and Tiny – and maybe even Victor: ‘I have the papers in which to give my views, but I think the House of Lords will be better’), reports of the ‘death of the press barons’ are somewhat exaggerated. The British certainly like to give the ...”

“... always foredoomed, because the corrected spin never has equal impetus with the original. Consider Robert Graves’s attempt to revise Fitzgerald’s Omar Khayyam. The AV is peculiar, even so: for no magister can be detected, among King James’s translators. Ward Allen’s researches in Alabama, and Gerald Hammond’s in Manchester, have not turned up any ...”

“... One theme of this book is that there are significant psychological differences between the sexes.’ The trouble is that from where we are standing the task of distinguishing differences which are or might be programmed, differences due to learning, and differences which are not differences but stereotypes is not operationally feasible. Dr May does not attempt it ...”

“... figures take up only half the picture surface. In the Ballet Scene from Meyerbeer’s Opera ‘Robert le Diable’ the figures on stage are unfocused, ghostly white-sheeted nuns. They are broadly painted and form a pale band across the canvas; moonlight drifts through the round arches of the set; the strongest highlights are a splash of white seen through ...”

“... translation.’ In a recent interview Sato directs the reader to Nabokov’s savage demolition of Robert Lowell’s ‘adaptation’ of a Mandelstam poem: ‘“Adapted” to what? To the needs of an idiot audience? To the demands of good taste? To the level of one’s own genius?’ Although Sato’s translations have occasionally been criticised as ...”

“... warrior who would have redeemed Britain’s honour. ‘Prince Henry on Horseback’ by Robert Peake the Elder (c.1606-08). The National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition (until 13 January), which is scholarly in detail and spectacular to view, is an attempt to rediscover the truth behind the later myths. What it largely reveals is an earlier set of ...”

“... From August Sander’s portraits of German types, labelled degenerate by the Nazis, to Robert Frank’s photographs of a sadder, rougher USA than the picture magazines showed, to Richard Avedon’s pictures of Westerners who were odder and stranger physically, and maybe mentally, than local pride allowed to be possible, and Diane Arbus’s freakish ...”