“... by occasional economic interdependence and mainly beneficent chance: the narrative structure that Robert Altman used in his film Short Cuts, set in Los Angeles, is here projected across the globe. Beneath the novel’s postcolonial multiplicity lurks a neocon assurance of the smallness of the world and the fundamental Westernness of all who live in ...”

“... heartland of the global American imperium. Except for Jane and Paul Bowles in Morocco, only Robert Stone and Joan Didion suggest themselves, and neither of them is associated closely with any one setting. On the whole, American writers seem convinced that the vital features of their society are most clearly discernible at its centre, even though it is ...”

“... was getting started, to a Yorkshire collector, Henry Savile, and then to the antiquary Sir Robert Cotton, whose books came mostly from the dissolution of the monasteries. The Cottonian library also contained the sole extant copy of Beowulf, which in 1731 narrowly escaped destruction in a serious fire. After a spell in the Bodleian the collection ...”

“... moved on, surely reasonably, to 1914-18. Reminiscent in some ways of Paul Fussell’s work, and of Robert Wohl’s The Generation of 1914 in others, this book has a thesis. Like Wolff’s, it works outward from particular occasions to generalisations. One is the first night of Le Sacre du Printemps in May 1913, ‘a milestone in the development of ...”

“... of dancing. Altogether the choruses are less richly rendered than they are in the translation by Robert Fagles, but the austerity is deliberate and this whole work is very cool and restrained. It results from an independent approach to Sophocles, and the introduction offers a personal reading of the plays which is both interesting and quite unlike the way ...”

“... was a word he often used of modern masterpieces, even referring in a formal speech of eulogy on Robert Frost’s 85th birthday to the ‘terrible realities’ in Frost’s poetry.) The Tertans lose out irrevocably, the Blackburns win irrevocably, and the well-meaning Howe ends up with good career prospects and colluding with the Dean and Blackburn. A later ...”

“... O’Neill’s imagination, he saw himself as a novelist, as the latest of his many biographers, Robert Dowling, points out. After a near fatal suicide attempt in 1912 – the episode is chronicled in the recently discovered short play ‘Exorcism’ – he gave up the romance of death for the romance of art. ‘So here’s looking forward to the new ...”

“... Keeper. Elizabeth was thus aunt to two of Shakespeare’s most influential contemporaries, Sir Robert Cecil and Sir Francis Bacon. The Cooke sisters were a byword for intelligence and high education. Their family home at Gidea Hall, near Romford, was described by the Cambridge scholar Walter Haddon as a ‘little university’, and here they learned ...”

“... of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company, as well as politicians such as William Jennings Bryan, Robert La Follette and even (for a while) Woodrow Wilson, whose New Freedom campaign of 1912 proposed to renew entrepreneurial opportunities through anti-trust and regulatory policies. He recalls a certain kind of populist progressive: distrustful of big business ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... made such an impact on me was that it wasn’t among the ten Montale poems that appeared in Robert Lowell’s 1961 book of translations, Imitations. I am saying, I suppose, that Lowell spoiled the ground in making it accessible. At this moment I would guess that Imitations is more influential than any other aspect of Lowell’s poetic practice: the idea ...”

“... in the country. Labour in the city reached the zenith of its power during the mayoralty of Robert Wagner Jr (son of the senator who had drafted the New Deal measure recognising workers’ right to collective bargaining) between 1954 and 1966. Elected with strong labour support, Wagner extended the right to unionise to municipal workers, and presided ...”

“... Lafite du Languedoc’; others have been praised to the heights by the likes of Hugh Johnson and Robert Parker. The wine is now on the list at the Tour d’Argent and the 1986 vintage retails at the vineyard for £65 a bottle. The sole shadow on the lives of these millionaires is cast by the odd hailstorm. No one to whom I have begun recounting the story ...”

“... frogs, the briar grows thicker and thicker round the rose. Sometimes the authority he claims is Robert Lowell’s: They wear their skins like cast-offs. Their skin grows Puckered round the knees like rumpled hose. There are also poems – ‘On Not Being Milton’ and ‘The Rhubarbarians’ – in which, enjoying a bit of rough stuff, he plays the ...”

“... In the meantime, however, the United Irishmen were pushed back into self-reliance, manifested in Robert Emmet’s attempted insurrection of 1803. Elliott gives this as much space as Hoche’s expedition, though it had no concrete connection with France. Like the rest of her book, apart from broad-ranging introductory and concluding chapters, this account is ...”