“... 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 ...”

“... unusually explicit about the fissure that runs through his work: ‘No one is going to catch me, lady, and make me a man. I want always to be a little boy and to have fun. (So perhaps he thinks, but it is only his greatest pretend.)’ One reason for his reluctance to identify with adults was that he could hardly look them in the eye. He never grew much ...”

“... distressing reading in some ways, but with a few cheery dispatches for all of us, as when one lady emerges to register: ‘It never made anybody shy away. I have had many lovers since then, and I mean lots! It’s made no difference. If anything it has caused men to love me more and with more tenderness.’ So let us end by sending a healthy hate message ...”

“... these events on the life of the house is the subject of the tale. The top flat belongs to an old lady, long retired from her job and on her last lap. She is not a sibyl or a sage, but she is the presiding intelligence, the Mrs Moore of the story. The middle flat is inhabited by a family – father in advertising, mother in a social work job and in love with ...”

“... some gentle reflexions on your lordship’s want either of generosity or of bowels toward a lady who had not refused you the full enjoyment of all her charms.’ That is the seamy side of the philosophy of living only in the present, so beautifully expressed in ‘Love and Life’: Then talk not of inconstancy,   False hearts, and broken vows; If ...”

“... was shamelessly cribbed from the manuscript of a story submitted to him for his opinion by a lady admirer. The design had to be given; the texture then came from the experiences of rather more than half a lifetime. One has always to bear in mind that, as a novelist, Stendhal was a very late starter: if his contemporary Jane Austen had waited as long as ...”

“... was to leave her in some degree of lurch. Then there is Mrs Forester, the fallen woman, or lady, whose little boy (clearly doomed from the start, like young Hanno in Buddenbrooks) was to die of rabies – there is already a rabid animal on the prowl – leaving her free to elope with the grimly tenacious Captain Hagan. The last words of The Hill ...”

“... giving a compelling account of the Burgundian and French contexts in which Anne was raised to be a lady of the court. Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands, described Anne at the age of thirteen as ‘so bright and pleasant for her young age’. Margaret’s court was full of art and literature: she owned tapestries, sculptures, paintings (including ...”

“... they brought the Danelaw to heel. After Æthelred died in 911, his widow, Æthelflæd, ruled as ‘Lady of the Mercians’ until her death in 918, by which point the Vikings had either surrendered or been forced back north of the Humber. Edward then took over Mercia, establishing his own direct rule there, a transition made easier by the lack of a male heir to ...”

“... and precise political statement in a recipe, or to find the culinary counterparts to Guernica or Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, capable of earning their creators obloquy, exile or death. Marinetti’s fascist-surrealist manifesto, La Cucina Futurista, with its diatribe against unmanly pasta asciutta, was at once a singular exception and a total failure: pasta only ...”