Create a view with checkboxes per role, that generates an email to an admin I want a registered user to be able to tick rows in a table, and then submit an email to a predefined email address containing the titles of the selected rows. 

VBO almost does what I want - in that there is a "send email" option, but on clicking the button it displays a form to be filled in with email address, title subject etc to send the email - I don't want that, I want it just to send a single email when the user clicks the button containing the titles of the selected rows.
There is Views Send module, you may try this.

Views Send enables you to send mass mailing from a View.

This module support tokens and Global: Send E-mail with VBO.