“... again in the Jacobean fascination with death, was that of the relentless mutability of matter – Alexander the Great could be turned in his clay to the bung in a wine barrel. It is a trope that recurs repeatedly in Peter Redgrove’s recent work, You take turns to be food, Before you can grind wheat you have to be wheat, Before you can eat bread you are a ...”

“... to precede it. In the week leading up to the action, a third of the Committee of 100, among them Robert Bolt, Arnold Wesker and Christopher Logue, as well as Bertrand Russell and his wife, had been sent to jail, accused of inciting ‘members of the public to commit breaches of the peace’.This massive PR blunder on the government’s part ensured that on ...”

“... honest God is the noblest work of man,’ observed the great 19th-century American agnostic Robert Ingersoll. Parodying Alexander Pope, Ingersoll offered his ironic support to a liberal Protestant theology that he judged less destructive than its orthodox predecessors. He understood the liberal Protestant God to ...”

“... the presidency, there were several attempts to restore the family to the office. JFK’s brother Robert was assassinated after his victory in the California Democratic primary in 1968. The immediate chances of a third brother, Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, were scuppered after the Chappaquiddick incident in 1969 – when a young female aide ...”

“... and in either vigorous or diminished form extended into the Hellenistic period (after the death of Alexander in 323 BC) and beyond, well into the Roman Empire. Classical Athens was a polis, but so was a tiny Arcadian town such as Orchomenos. In the second century AD, the obscure hamlet of Naryka petitioned the Emperor Hadrian to agree it was a polis, offering ...”

“... On the cover of Jack’s paperback there is a portrait of Alexander Montgomerie, a handsome young man, finely dressed, but his eyes and the set of his mouth suggest great inner depths, perhaps profound sorrows. Unfortunately, when one opens the book, one finds the statement: ‘As no likeness of Montgomerie has yet been discovered, the artist’s impression on the cover is based on contemporary portraits ...”

“... now?’The undertakers zipped him into a mauve body bag and took him away. A few days later, Alexander, my older brother, went to the funeral home – all these homes, this last being the least homely – to choose a coffin. He reported that Daddy had been installed in a garage which, it had been stressed, was modified to mortuary standards. We bundled ...”

“... There is certainly an abundance of it in the opening rooms at the RA. The Caucasus landscapes of Alexander Bogomazov, a classmate of Exter’s in Kyiv, are one of the surprises of the exhibition, with their rolling scrolls of fuchsia and royal blue hills and mountains. Bogomazov admired Gauguin’s Polynesian pictures, which he saw in Moscow in 1911, though ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... forgiven for that. Karl was much given to leaving – ‘more of a born leaver’, he said of Robert Lowell, whose wife had made the mistake of calling him ‘a born joiner’. He started at the Treasury, had a short stint in television; became literary editor first of the Spectator, then the Statesman; joined the Listener as editor in 1967 and the ...”

“... he rarely managed to earn the publisher’s advance. Yet his reputation never really declined. Robert Donat was keen to do The Polyglots as a film, but eventually decided that ‘only Hollywood or Alexander Korda could do justice to the story.’ Basil Dean, who had filmed The Constant Nymph, was enthusiastic as ...”

“... than thirty men’. Then follows a remarkable passage: ‘Among the neglected men I have found Robert Bage, Henry Brooke, John Bunyan, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Delaney [sic], Emanuel Ford, William Godwin, Richard Graves, Robert Greene, Robert Henryson, Charles Johnstone, Charles ...”

“... with the Russian people. As he said in a 1982 interview, Vasilii Terkin, the unheroic hero of Alexander Tvardovsky’s vastly popular wartime poem of that name, a kind of Good Soldier Schweik whose survival skills coexisted with a bedrock layer of Soviet patriotism, ‘really meant something for every Russian – and for me too. I knew therefore that if I ...”

“... with egg yolk and oats and then exposed to the mercy of two hungry ducks. A merchant called Robert Nettleton was awarded the rank of ‘archimandrite’ in a club called the British Monastery, although he also allowed his house to be used for divine service and was actively involved in petitioning George I for assistance in building an English ...”