“... 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 ...”

“... James I, ‘took a little Mislike’ to it and it fizzled out. Charles I made the antiquary Robert Cotton close his famous library, thinking it seditious. Suspected at various times of anti-Stuart sympathies, closet Catholicism, republicanism, even as late as 1797 the antiquaries could be denounced by George III as a ‘Popish cabal’. Still, they ...”

“... them. To be fair, not all the faces are dull. Some of the later portraits, for example that of Mrs Robert Sandilands, remind you that projection of character – they almost bring David to mind – can be achieved without Gainsborough-style feathered brushwork, or Hals-style slashes. Batoni, like many portrait painters with other strings to their bow, believed ...”

“... a flashback, because it returns about a third of the way through the catch-up tale. We see Mickey (Robert Pattinson) and a crowd of other people seeking to be chosen for an expedition that will take them away from Earth. Mickey and a friend have a particular need to be elsewhere in order to escape being murdered by the gangs to whom they owe money. Some of ...”

“... a cake and a Bible to Tehran to discuss an arms-for-hostages trade with the Ayatollah Khomeini. Robert MacNamara went to a briefing on Cuba believing that it was more than likely that he would not live through the weekend. The Central Intelligence Agency was caught, in collusion with the Mafia, plotting to poison Fidel Castro’s cigars. Ronald Reagan’s ...”

“... was relieved that she had chosen a reasonably promising young man whose family he knew. Mosley, Robert Cecil reported to Curzon, was ‘not in the first flight’ but had ‘a good future before him’. He was two years older than Cimmie; very dashing (though Curzon at once remarked on his ‘rather Jewish appearance’), and the youngest MP in the ...”

“... poets in these pages – the stellar cast includes Lillian Hellman, Mary McCarthy, Truman Capote, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Penn Warren, Peter Matthiessen, Philip Roth, Irwin Shaw and the always vivacious William Burroughs (‘He is an absolutely astonishing personage, with the grim mad face of Savonarola ...”

“... with these two books; even the names of the poets – Charles Tomlinson, or David Gascoyne, or Robert Conquest, or John Holloway, or Christopher Middleton, or Geoffrey Hill – stood for a world that was fully England. Looking at the list of poets was like having one’s Irish nose pushed up against the polished glass of a posh window in some imaginary Big ...”

“... German, French, and Italian – Austrian lawyer, Jew, perfect typist, wants a position – Dr Robert Fischer, Deutschmesiterplatz 2, Vienna I.’28 July 1938: ‘Young Jewess, opera and concert singer, music teacher, Vienna Music Academy with honours, besides well-trained doctor’s assistant, speaking French, Italian, German, perfect household ...”

“... I ask. ‘We must show that we deserve help. We must show that we can work.’ Who will help them? Robert Maxwell says he is helping them, which is a dismaying thought. To be introduced to the delights of capitalism by Robert Maxwell? By Robert Maxwell, friend and publisher of Todor ...”

“... helped by the untimely publication of his ditto. Graham Greenes (d. 1991) are on the way down, Robert Lowells (d. 1977, with the Collected Poems coming next year) are a good buy; stock in Anthony Burgess (d. 1993) should probably be held for a year or two; Borgeses (d. 1986) will surge once the editing and republishing are sorted out; James Merrills ...”

“... movement is now probably best remembered by the outstanding writers associated with it, such as Robert Penn Warren (All the King’s Men), John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, even Robert Lowell, who literally pitched his tent on Tate’s lawn. All of these must have responded warmly to ...”