Search Results

“... for constructing such a complex urban environment. He was fortunate to find early masters, Robert Foote and then John Baird, and in all likelihood they introduced the aspiring architect to the ideas that were to transform his art and profession: historicism and comparative architectural history. In the years of Thomson’s apprenticeships in the ...”

“... route, Peter Redgrove has arrived back at a very ancient place: or at any rate, a place that Robert Graves unearthed in The White Goddess and would have us believe is ancient. Graves is probably right: but it is best to approach enchanted ground, as he himself does, doubly armed, with red thread around a rowan twig and a pinch of scepticism. What is ...”

“... opened, linking San Francisco and Oakland and Berkeley, with Yerba Buena Island as a stepping-stone. Then, in April 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge appeared, connecting the northwest tip of San Francisco (Fort Point) to Marin County and the north. The Golden Gate – painted a kind of brick-red, running north-south, and serving as the transom to the Pacific ...”

“... of symbol fire Three nameless milkless pits Damn your cold breath down your gullet To the stone under your left breast To the cut-throat bird in that stone To the crow of crows the nest of emptiness The hungry shears of beginning and beginning To heaven’s womb don’t I know it Damn your seed and sap and shine ...”

“... in wilful collective hallucination, the abbey and its visitors mostly ignore them. As Robert Musil said, writing before BLM, ‘there is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument.’ The abbey’s audio guide – the English version is mellifluously narrated by Jeremy Irons – mentions them only in brief asides about Poets’ Corner and a ...”

“... and addressing him scornfully, at least in her memoirs, as ‘You, with your pale baby face, and stone-cold blue eyes, you’re a sadist.’ Antipathy was mutual, Gerhardie referring to her as the meanest woman he ever met. Coldness as an aid to stylishness was admired by writers of Waugh’s and Anthony Powell’s generation, and to be fair to ...”

“... were resettled in a ‘model’ village along with their forebears’ gravestones. By contrast Robert Macfarlane’s accounts are nothing if not first-hand. He is a literary scholar who has spent many hundreds of hours walking in England and the Scottish Highlands, in Spain, Palestine and Tibet. His aim here is to describe some of his most memorable ...”

“... slashed at him, Frizer had wrested it away (presumably while the witnesses stood as if turned to stone) and had inflicted the fatal wound. No other version was available to the court; these were the only witnesses, and their account could not be contradicted. Four weeks after Marlowe’s death, Frizer was pardoned. One of the rumours that went about town was ...”

“... the first volume of his celebrated Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69), William Black stone concluded his account of how the law makes a husband and wife one person by suggesting that the legal disappearance of the married Englishwoman was effectively a tribute to her sex. ‘These are the chief legal effects of marriage during the ...”

“... miles southwest of Exeter the A38 rips along the edge of the churchyard of Dean Prior, where Robert Herrick, with one period of interruption, was rector between 1630 and his death in 1674. The interruption began in or around January 1646, when the New Model Army marched along the predecessor of the A38 to relieve Plymouth. On their way they seem to have ...”

“... of priorities in Zhivkov’s Bulgaria from the currency: the one-lev note features an old stone tower; the two-lev, a girl picking grapes; the five-lev, a Black Sea resort; the ten-lev, a communal farm; the 20-lev, a showplace of heavy industry.) To make matters worse, Bulgaria was a country ill-suited to its macho conversion to heavy industry: it ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... of Unionist voters as part of that overall vote. There is also an article by the No-campaigner Robert McCartney, a barrister and UK Unionist MP whom no one in Britain I know has ever heard of. Perhaps that’s because he’s kept the press on their guard with his proven readiness to sue for libel (there was a famous episode in Northern Ireland some years ...”

“... made them all. Prospero’s words are appropriate. Lutyens’s preference for bricks and timber, stone and slate, rather than for steel and concrete, plate-glass and box girders, betokened a greater affinity with the world and values of Renaissance humanism than with the utilitarian impersonality of the Welfare State. ‘When Democracy builds’ was the ...”

“... as Belphoebe, Diana, a goddess supreme, never fully forgave him. Ralegh wrote a letter to Sir Robert Cecil from the Tower which was probably intended to be shown to the queen in order to win back her favour. The letter displays Ralegh at his best and worst. It’s a monstrous blast of self-pity, tempered by his characteristic half-belief in his own ...”