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“... Smith loved these lines by an unnamed satirist: Hush, hush, it couldn’t be worse Christopher Robin is having his nurse. And they make some peculiar gestures towards imaginative analysis. Stevie Smith’s mother once won a prize for a short story in a local Eisteddfod: Barbera and McBrien say that her daughter’s literary career could be seen as an ...”

“... too hard to make you forget that she’s performing; the effect is like reading a gossipy round-robin email from a tremendously entertaining and well-read person you’d have no qualms about hanging with but might think twice about bothering if she was making notes. ‘How does someone with no real academic aspirations end up spending seven years in ...”

“... How sane, how wise!’ I am the mirror where your image moves, Neat and obedient twin, until one day It moves before you move; and it is you Who have to ape its moods and motions, who Must now obey. That’s Tessimond’s take on the popular press, and like his poems on advertising and money and the silver screen and the various types who feature in his ...”

“... near-sighted, young Bucky loved to sail and invented a new kind of oar. His childhood hero was Robin Hood, perhaps because his father’s death had impoverished the family. When he reached Harvard, he was snubbed by his wealthier classmates, cut classes, squandered his allowance by inviting a line of chorus girls to dinner, and was thrown out twice. After ...”

“... of history to please the patriarchy, I’ll move to Canada’), along with a grand tirade by Robin Morgan, a reprise of her 1970 essay ‘Goodbye to All That’: How dare anyone unilaterally decide when to turn the page on history, papering over real inequities and suffering constituencies in the promise of a feel-good campaign? How dare anyone claim to ...”

“... from each of Shakespeare’s plays. This is Stratford-upon-Avon on the weekend after 23 April, a day celebrated since the 18th century as Shakespeare’s Birthday. As Park Honan’s impressive new biography reminds us, the parish records for 1564 make it certain only that he was christened on 26 April, and our knowledge of contemporary church practice ...”

“... are flypapers. 10 March. I read the Sunday papers first thing, otherwise they hang about all day like an unmade bed. I find less and less in them to read and feel like somebody stood against a wall while a parade goes by. An article in the Garden, the journal of the Royal Horticultural Society: ‘Making Sense of the Celandine’. 11 March. Depressed by ...”

“... Time was the artist Joseph Nash, not the architect John; the authority on Hadrian’s Wall is Robin Birley, not Robert; William III’s historiographer was Thomas Rymer, not Edward; it was in the ruins of the Capitol, not the Colosseum, that Gibbon conceived the idea of the Decline and Fall; and Rothesay is not an island. It would be wrong, however, to ...”

“... her mother told of Fa Mu Lan. In a less diluted Water Margin epic, she is a kind of Maid Marian as Robin Hood (‘My army did not rape, only taking food where there was an abundance. We brought order wherever we went’), or a female avenger, at times a Bruce Lee in drag. She defeats a giant, who changes into his true shape, a snake – whereupon his disgusted ...”

“... Sea port on the very edge of the empire, just south of the estuary of the Danube. Perhaps, as Robin Nisbet once suggested, the vindictive emperor was venting some learned spleen with this choice. Ovid had written a tragedy called Medea, the only work of his which did not survive to the age of printing. Augustus would have known that Tomis was said to have ...”

“... White Paper are only sketched out. The Government is awaiting the publication of a report by Sir Robin Auld, showing the results of his comprehensive review of the criminal courts, before flesh is put on the bones of the recommendations. As so often with New Labour, presentation seems to be thought as important as content. The White Paper is full of ...”

“... write. Sometimes historical proxies or punning nicknames could stand in. Wolsey, Sejanus and ‘Robin’ were all used to characterise Walpole as an ambitious upstart, heading for a fall. More often, names were gutted or (as Henry Fielding put it) ‘emvowelled’, with dashes or asterisks replacing key letters or every character except the first. This ...”

“... for the council in 1970 at the age of 22. Ten years later the young politician had put aside his day job as a teacher and was now leader of Sheffield council, a truly astonishing rise for a man with his disadvantages. Blunkett in power in Sheffield was Blunkett Mark One. He concentrated on his particular concerns of public transport and geriatric care. (A ...”

“... identify themselves and give me an instance of their call. As it is, I know the blackbird and the robin but that’s about it. Stopped in the ticket office at King’s Cross yesterday by a Scotsman who I thought wanted to talk to me about Sophie. Which Sophie? I say. Not Sophie at all. He wants a selfie.8 June. I suppose I’ve managed to die, he ...”

“... John Birt is suitably impressed when I tell him that I actually met the great Lord Reith on the day of his extraordinary speech in the House of Lords likening commercial broadcasting to the Black Death. It was as if I’d said to the present Chief of the Defence Staff that I’d met the first Duke of Wellington.15 March 1994. A reply arrives from John ...”