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“... they argue and quarrel. They prop themselves on their elbows, like figures on Etruscan tombs, and discuss sex, literature, psychiatry or ancient Greece. But what it always comes to in the end is the battle between the sexes, scenes from which are acted out, as in the pornographic bits, with the limited aid of stereotypes and jargon. In one role ...”

“... In a small yard outside the church, members of his multi-ethnic clan lie buried. Some of their tombs have crosses on top and epitaphs on the side in Persian – memorials to a period in Anglo-Indian history when European and Eastern cultures comfortably converged. Finding your way to St James’s Church takes a bit of ingenuity, at least on the part of ...”

“... recapture some of their former splendour? Such thoughts were very much in my mind while reading Robert Garland’s retelling of Athens’s tribulations during those two fraught years of Persian invasion. It is a story that has been told countless times, but never before has the narrative concentrated primarily on the Athenians’ wholesale evacuation of ...”

“... the archaeologist Heba Adly uncovered a clump of papyri while excavating a shallow grave in the tombs at the ancient city of Philadelphia in the Faiyum Oasis, two hours’ drive south of Cairo. She didn’t need to unfold it to know it could be significant. Philadelphia, founded in the early third century bce by Ptolemy II, had already yielded another ...”

“... First World War was over, but its aftershocks rippled on. Golden treasure, a boy pharaoh and lost tombs in the Valley of the Kings offered readers an escape. The inscrutable Orient and its discovery by the West made for a familiar storyline – a myth to meet the needs of empire, which endured as empires fell.Like his one-time colleague Howard Carter, Weigall ...”

“... begins in 1954. Modelling himself on his father, who was one of the architects of the New Deal, Robert Wagner Jr won the mayoral race promising a ‘New Deal for New York’. Reforming the city jail system was part of his vision. Just as now, jails were used to manage unemployment and instability in working-class life, with young Black people and those of ...”

“... with weeds, there are the remains of quarters inhabited by the wealthy dead: monumental marble tombs looking all the grander for their dereliction, as do the crumbling rich quarters of bombed cities. Here are statues in marble or bronze, seated or standing, entrances through iron gratings into family vaults, with the names of the occupants chiselled above ...”

“... it was abroad: indeed, the English ‘translation’ of Cuvier’s great works by the Scotsman Robert Jameson emphasised the concordance of the geological and the biblical record far more than the original had. In short, the traditional British drama, with its heroes and villains, is a romanticised confection designed to put our national achievements at ...”

“... angels: ‘total they mix, union of pure with pure.’ They sit through the night among the tombs of the dead and talk. They discuss sin and God, harmlessness and predestination. What would happen if they were the only ones left, after the end of the world? It would be a place where they make the rules, one where they could live together as a ...”

“... are some details, such as those about the Crucifixion, which the writers claimed as fitting in. Robert Graves has made splendid use of this line of explanation in The Nazarene Gospel Restored, deducing an entirely credible character. According to Mark and Matthew, the last words of Jesus were ‘My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’, though the other two ...”

“... people; the medics in Kiev and Moscow Hospital 6 who attended the injured and irradiated; and Dr Robert Gale, the American surgeon who joined them. You have Mikhail Gorbachev, the charismatic, controversial Soviet leader, castigated for remaining silent from 26 April to 14 May, who nevertheless seized on the Chernobyl accident to add powerful impetus to his ...”

“... satire and after. He asks me if we ever had any alternative titles to Beyond the Fringe, which was Robert Ponsonby’s contribution and not popular with us at the time. I can’t think of any but J. Miller later remembers ‘At the Drop of a Brick’, a reference to Flanders and Swann’s At the Drop of a Hat and Peter Cook’s suggestion that we call it ...”

“... did not mean them to disturb. Sculpture now has very few of its old commemorative functions. The tombs of the great compete in modesty and have no effigies. Few of us who have political heroes would seriously propose erecting bronze statues of them. To discover how, when and why these functions fell into disrepute must be one of the ambitions of the serious ...”

“... for them seventy years later. Indeed, when the classical Greeks discovered Geometric graves and tombs they not only failed to connect them with their greatest poet, but denied they were Greek at all. The more we find out about Homer’s period, the more his poetry comes as a surprise. With so little information coming from elsewhere, our only certain ...”

“... 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 ...”