“... In May 1804, at the age of 18, Benjamin Robert Haydon left his home in Plymouth and set off for London to become a great artist. His mother was distraught, his father furious, but there was no doubt in Haydon’s mind either of his vocation or of his genius. He could have worked in his father’s bookshop and inherited a secure, independent income but he didn’t want to ...”

“... stand the test of time? An account that pays more attention to the how and less to the why? Enter Robert Darnton, the author of a dozen major books on Ancien Régime France. Darnton is not averse to theory. His work bears, lightly but discernibly, the imprint of his collaboration with the cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz, with whom he taught a seminar ...”

“... parts of the mind, yet as they emerge from that promising condition where they are still, in Robert Frost’s words, ‘a lump in the throat, a homesickness, a lovesickness’, they depend for safe passage not only upon instinctive tacts but upon literary awarenesses, upon an ear that is more or less cultivated as well being naturally sensitive. During ...”

“... in the past decade. Four enormous corporations – headed by the late Roy Thomson, Rupert Murdoch, Robert Anderson and ‘Tiny’ Rowland – have been involved in their rescue. And without the intervention of firms of this size, these papers would already be dead. It is unlikely, however, that giant corporations can play the role of publishers of papers of ...”

“... the fact that anti-monumentality was precisely what the New York minimalists – sculptors like Robert Morris, Richard Serra and Donald Judd – so polemically espoused. As Morris put it, they were bent on making neither objects nor monuments. Their art sought an in-between condition, a size, shape and presence intelligible only in the way a work ...”

“... effects, just convincing enough to make Picasso’s Charnel House or a group of mirrored cubes by Robert Morris seem not quite right. The combination of ‘real’ footage, digital effects and a complexly motile camera makes for seductive and startling effects, as the ghosts of exhibitions and installations past appear and swiftly vanish. There’s some ...”

“... of the US army, as it advanced across Europe in 1944, were Rolleiflexes. Contemporaries such as Robert Capa would have found that decision insane – almost as insane as joining the advance in the first place, given that Miller was a former fashion model who never wore the same outfit for more than a few hours. She was also a hypochondriac. Her colleague ...”

“... terrorists by the same method. Streep appears again in Lions for Lambs (2007), directed by Robert Redford, another decent liberal movie but interminably talky. She is a long-time journalist interviewing Tom Cruise as the rising star of the uncertain Republican Party. Redford is a weary but devoted college professor trying to awaken idealism in what he ...”

“... in the 18th century. The drawings are gathered together in The Four Books on Architecture (Robert Tavernor and Richard Schofield’s 1997 translation is the most recent), which are still a source for modern architects. Palladio’s origins may explain his books’ directness. He worked with his hands – he was a stone carver until he was 30 years old ...”

“... Some, it turns out, have a further distance to migrate than others. One of Simpson’s lawyers, Robert Kardashian (you knew it was only a matter of time before the Kardashians came into it), played by David Schwimmer in the TV series, was perfectly certain in life of his friend’s innocence, yet, in TV-land, certainty is just a crease to be ironed out by ...”

“... signed by ‘Matt’, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. Another government minister, Robert Jenrick, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, signs them too, but he keeps his distance (and both his names). I’ve tried to explain to Matt’s representatives on earth that I had Covid-19 in the middle of March, that I had a ...”

“... peace’ they have achieved that ‘Some shall be pardoned, and some punishèd.’ In the film Robert Stephens as the Prince convincingly says: ‘All are punishèd.’ Justice is not what’s to come: it is what they are miserably living with.The streets of the city are very busy in the film, and the walls and piazzas and churches seem to enjoy their ...”

“... is that you can kill anyone.’ It’s an accident, of course, that another Corleone is played by Robert De Niro, the first of the ludicrously quarrelling men in Killers of the Flower Moon. There is one principle that underlies all these cases. Killing human beings is part of ordinary business practice. Problems may arise only in the way we do it.Where are we ...”

“... murals are spectacular but often threatening, and the question is not so much who as how. Robert Harris’s novel of the same name tells us that ‘conclave’ – the private assembly of cardinals to elect a new pope – means ‘with a key’, and the movie makes even more haste than the book to show us that the key is lost and so are several keys ...”

“... I bought from him more than ten years ago, maybe fifteen years ago, which I first saw with Robert Armstrong in late December 1980 in his studio in Gorey, Co. Wexford, rests against the wall of the room where I work. We are uneasy with each other now. The talk turns to Christmas and he mentions the sadness of Gorey and that extraordinary space he made ...”