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“... There are​ two portraits Roger Fenton took of himself, separated by only a year, one of them in the exhibition of his photographs of the Crimean War at the Queen’s Gallery in Edinburgh (until 26 November) and the other not. The first, from 1854, seems conventional: we see a Victorian gentleman – hair parted, beard trimmed to cover only the underside of his face, leaving the strong chin to fight its own battles – seated in a chair, his arm resting on a covered table ...”

“... Kingsley presents some practitioners we have become used to taking seriously – Gustave Le Gray, Roger Fenton, Julia Margaret Cameron – and others we still cannot, notably Oscar Rejlander, whose composite photo-allegory The Two Ways of Life (1857), replete with draped, earnest males, nude, lubricious females and deferences to Raphael, amused Queen ...”

“... diagonals and stronger contrasts, and in the hands of many of its other gifted practitioners – Roger Fenton, or Baldus, or Salzmann again – manages to make such tensions serve as the compositional and conceptual axis of the work. Take The Floods of 1856, Brotteaux Quarter, Lyon, produced by Baldus at the behest of the French government, and one of ...”

“... the Crimean campaign of the Times’s correspondent, William Howard Russell, and the photographer Roger Fenton, the only alternative to accepting the official line was to go and see for yourself. Which is what many people did in 1815. As Hofschröer notes, by the time Siborne’s model went on show in 1838, most people already had a pretty good idea of ...”

“... steps, to find the remains of the Helmores and bury them. ‘In the beginning was the Word’ – Roger read from Helmore’s Bible found open at St John. Isabella moved her lips, ‘The Word was Manchester.’ Shh, shh, the shovel said. Shh … This final passage suggests many things: that Isabella will shortly crack up, that she is beginning to hate ...”

“... the latest leaflet, or procuring another drink. And there were the Americans. I remember James Fenton noticing how they would cluster a little closer together and talk in a fashion slightly more intense. Mainly Rhodes or Fulbright scholars, they had come from every state of the union with what amounted to a free pass. The Yanks of Oxford were accustomed to ...”

“... no thanks to me. He has me reading some of the poems, which I don’t do particularly well. James Fenton, who is also reading, does much better because flatter. There are some clips of Auden I haven’t seen, possibly from German TV, and it’s interesting to see that his face doesn’t begin properly to crumple until the mid-1960s. Also note how spry he is ...”

“... in Bodley’s strongroom on the next shelf to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.’ 17 April. George Fenton comes round with a present, an overcoat from John Pearce, the fashionable tailor in Meard Street who specialises in remaking or renovating old clothes. The coat is French, long, black and once having had an astrakhan collar. It’s a lovely thing, but what ...”

“... been playing, with, responsible for their suppression, the commissioner of police for Bruges, one Roger de Bris. This gives quiet pleasure as it’s also the name of the transvestite stage director in Mel Brooks’s The Producers, who makes his appearance bare-shouldered and in a heavy ball gown. 7 March. Our pillar box is now emptied at 9 a.m. not by the ...”