“... literature encouraged translated into an iconography of ‘types’: the upper-class dandy and the lady of leisure, their fashion-plate surfaces a foil for the rags of the pitiable poor of the ‘abyss’, as neighbourhoods like the East End of London and New York’s Lower East Side were termed. Ethnicity, occupation and differentiated vices provided ...”

“... whom I adored – ‘wasn’t very nice to her daughter.’ Not long afterwards, an old lady who has known my mother all her life confirmed what my son had intuited: that my grandmother, a young widow, had not paid enough attention to her only daughter, and my mother, for much of her childhood, had had to endure the jealousy of her ...”

“... Irving and Judith have invited me to supper again tonight. I walk round there at seven. An old lady is already in their sitting-room, looking very composed. She is called Helen Rosen – she knew Lillian Hellman and Dashiel Hammett and stood out against McCarthy. She is the widow of a doctor who made a break-through with an operation for the deaf. She ...”

“... futures, her adviser was the counsel to Tyson Foods. Mike Espy, caught accepting favours for his lady friend, exemplifies the intermixture of sex, money and faeces in Washington Babylon’s excremental vision. While those emphasising party difference contrast Democratic support for women’s liberation with Republican defence of traditional family ...”

“... Countess of Bess-borough, was the sister of the Duchess of Devonshire and the mother of Lady Caroline Lamb, Byron’s mistress and wife of William Lamb, later Lord Melbourne, Victoria’s Prime Minister’). We are not told where a letter is sent from, or where it is received. In addition, the index lists only the writers and recipients. The lay-out ...”

“... and preparing, as in The Sportswriter, for a holiday weekend away. Not, this time, with a ‘lady friend’ but with Paul, his troubled teenage son. Since Ford locates the novel so precisely, on a Fourth of July weekend in 1988 with elections looming, you think initially that Frank, like John Updike’s Rabbit, will serve as some kind of litmus test for ...”

“... to the top of a steep rise called Portagee Hill and stood beneath the twin bell towers of Our Lady of Good Voyage ... Between the towers is a sculpture of the Virgin Mary, who gazes down with love and concern at a bundle in her arms. This is the Virgin who has been charged with the safety of the local fishermen. The bundle in her arms is not the infant ...”

“... than Dublin. In Dublin he had soon become involved not only in singing circles – the Italian lady who taught him believed she had ‘found a successor to Campanini’, the celebrated Italian tenor – but also in the business of politics and electioneering. He had natural skills for both. For the rest of his life he would tell stories of the great ...”

“... boy from Ireland suddenly surrounded by lots of posh people’. It makes you wonder why Lord and Lady Wilde paid those school fees. Merlin Holland’s essay on his grandfather in Peter Raby’s Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde illuminates these appropriations by charting a series of significant errors through multiple versions of Wilde’s history. Holland ...”

“... treated more carefully by George. Myrtle is sent to a posh boarding school to be ‘made into a lady’. Pompey Jones becomes a regular visitor to the Hardy household, on the pretext of doing odd jobs for George, but is sent away when one of his mysterious re-arrangements of the household furnishings causes George’s pregnant wife, Annie, to fall ...”

“... Lent.In 1566, Antwerp’s fragile religious accord cracked. Protestants attacked the Church of Our Lady, and within the hour, every church and monastery in the city was besieged by image-breakers. The mapmaker Abraham Ortelius, whose business depended on Antwerp’s cosmopolitanism, mourned that ‘the churches looked as though the devil had been at work there ...”

“... purchase limits. Within five hours, seven of Wu’s songs were outperforming Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga. The fans also figured out various ways to ‘slaughter’ Spotify, the Billboard Hot 100, the trending algorithms on YouTube and Twitter etc. The next time you see a strange name on the major pop charts, don’t be surprised: tech-savvy Chinese ...”

“... be impressed by the parade of celebrities at Hillary Clinton’s rallies – Beyoncé, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Bruce Springsteen etc. The French use the expression ‘la richesse insultante’. What does it mean for someone on social security to walk past shops with watches or shoes or dresses marked in the thousands of dollars? Each price ...”

“... a world of scurrying maids, laughing guards, courtiers ‘jealously discussing a posting’, a lady scuttling out of an equerry’s chamber.Lucrezia thinks in metaphors of embroidery and painting because they’re what she knows best. Outside the cathedral on the morning of her wedding, she notices the way ‘the campanile has stitched itself to the summer ...”

“... a Sicilian word for a child; the suffix means ‘big’; Hunt translates the name as ‘the Little Lady’, which seems to get the irony back to front). The Picciridduna, they say, is three metres tall and can cure la Rossa by kissing you on the mouth. Or maybe you need to burn her alive and eat the ashes. Or maybe it’s all nonsense. In any case, the reality ...”