“... has to fight for the phallic reality ... So I wrote my novel, which I want to call John Thomas and Lady Jane ... It rather looks as if Witter Bynner was a good influence on Lawrence, as well as being a severe and witty critic. But then, to judge by these letters, he was a pretty good fellow all round. He seems to have fancied himself as a sort of bohemian ...”

“... Blanche was made less exotic and compared, not to a lizard, but to a more conventional peacock. Lady Marchmain first read aloud from The Napoleon of Notting Hill, which was exchanged for The Wisdom of Father Brown at the same time that the quotation from the latter about ‘a twitch on the thread’ was inserted. These are scraps. There are more ...”

“... merchant wank, gone the hard-earned joys of the ski-slope and the hunting-field, gone Ludgrove and Lady Eden’s and the St Andrew’s Day Wall Game (‘No goals have been scored since the First World War, but Henry is always hoping’), gone the Bullingdon point-to-point, gone Glyndebourne, gone the Norland Nannies, gone the teeny silver thimbles, gone the ...”

“... Hamilton (carried over from Emerson’s first novel, Second Sight), is a bright, young and pretty lady of letters. In the enjoyment of what is apparently the most enviable of modern lives, she is unexpectedly deserted by Martin, her Classics-don-at-London-University husband. A ‘black sea of despair’ engulfs Jennifer. She lies awake until three o’clock ...”

“... may be a symptom. I was at times reminded of Coleridge writing in the Watchman of ‘the fine lady’ who ‘sips a beverage sweetened with human blood, even while she is weeping over the refined sorrows of Werther or Clementina’ (25 March 1796). Coleridge’s connection between breakfast sugar and the blood of the slaves who cut the cane is very much ...”

“... Opus 7, a satirical narrative in the style of Crabbe, based on the story of a ‘drinking old lady ... a neighbour for many years, and I had the greatest esteem for her because she knew what she wanted,’ came out in 1931. The late poems were privately printed, except for Boxwood, which STW thought of simply as verses for Reynolds Stone’s wood ...”

“... Nose. A bizarre coda was added when friends followed a ‘double’ to the apartment of a certain lady, but Solzhenitsyn was not amused: they had uncovered his secret liaison with Svetlova, the woman who became his second wife. Marriage to Svetlova seemed inevitable when she became pregnant. Radiation, had not, after all, destroyed the fertility of this ...”

“... and in Swiss Cottage, is seen for a moment in a convincing, hypothetical role – that of a bag-lady. Sometimes Dan Jacobson’s attempts to shape his raw material are less successful than this quiet masterpiece. The opening essay, ‘Kimberley’, sketches the town brilliantly – its dust, its racial divisions, ‘the stinging shriek of cicadas’ – but ...”

“... are types and humours – figures like the genial Mine Host, the Old Salt, the Apple-Cheeked Old Lady At The Village Shop, the Country Squire, and a complete fairy story set of Princes, Queens, Princesses, Duchesses and Dukes. Larkin’s ‘sunny Prestatyn’ says as much about tourist-posters as the theme will bear: there is no further point in being glum ...”

“... 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 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... underlying Wood’s conservatism reflects a society at odds with itself. Because she is a lady, Isabel has little to do; her idleness encourages the brooding that leads to the loss of her claims to a lady’s position. Older women are hostile to her, largely because she is admired by men, and miss no chance to ...”

“... La Mère Poulard’s omelette recipe in 1922 was satisfied, but modern taste suspects that the old lady was hiding ...”

“... Maxwell, daughter of Ernie ‘the Oil King’ Maxwell and his much younger Mexican cleaning lady. Finally, there are Lee’s roommates: Dede, ‘literally, a follower’, whose obvious Jewishness disqualifies her from consideration as a Serious Babe, and Sin-Jun, a deceptively mild Korean who hides a squid (among other things) in her closet and later ...”