“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... over in the living-room. ‘Di’ herself was in the picture just the other night. Quite the lady once you get to know her... I also like what Reed says about the fickleness of crowds. It was so sweet to see the masses gather under the balcony of Buckingham Palace this summer, yelling for the ‘Queen Mum’. She hasn’t been in such direct personal ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... The best of them is ‘The Girl from Zlot,’ a modern narrative that retains the metres of ‘The Lady of Shalott’ – ‘Four grey walls, and four grey towers’ – and catches some of Tennyson’s ...”

“... the meat is human flesh. The reason they raided the apartment was that the letter the young lady was asked to deliver contained only one sentence: ‘This is the last one I am sending you today.’ The dissemination of this rumour has meagre ideological value, and the motive for its transmission is largely its tellability. This may be why in some ...”

“... made there) and had come to feel some Remains-of-the-Day-like affection for one of his supporters, Lady Elizabeth Lindsay. Nothing came of it. She died of pneumonia early in 1937, and the Prof never loved again. Back on the committee, he seems to have behaved better, even being bracketed with Tizard in R.V. Jones’s account of the completion of the radar ...”

“... theme means that he avoids musicals that have almost nothing to say about America: My Fair Lady, The Lion King (which trumped the aggressively American Ragtime in both critical and financial success), Oliver! and almost all Sondheim’s early musicals, which attack the form without having any real American content. And as part of the same problem he ...”

“... plays a prominent role, he has siphoned off millions of dollars from these deals. The first lady, Susan Mubarak, heads around a hundred charities, some of which, the report alleges, are little more than fronts for money laundering: each charity might receive as much as $5 million a year, but the money isn’t properly accounted for. According to the ...”

“... for which she strives’ (Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime). Bearded Lady meets Twinkling Satellite: it’s probably happening right now, in the corner of a bookstore recently opened near ...”

“... up and threw her violently to the floor, causing her permanent damage. He regarded feminism as ‘lady-nonsense’ and was in favour of polygamy. His mother told him that he was irritating, overbearing and insignificant, which makes you wonder what his enemies thought of him. He was also a full-blown irrationalist, for whom reason was merely a blunt ...”

“... as an appendix.Slowly she transmuted herself into an unstable compound of rakishly hospitable Lady Bountiful in the country (Picasso’s visit was a great success, as he seemed to enliven the whole farm and environs; Miller herself never blended with the local pastimes and persons, never took walks except to the nearby pub) and dignified Mrs Ronald ...”

“... In​  The Portrait of a Lady, Mrs Touchett describes finding Isabel Archer ‘sitting in a dreary room on a rainy day, reading a heavy book and boring herself to death’. She adds, defending herself, ‘You may say I shouldn’t have enlightened her – I should have let her alone. There’s a good deal in that, but I acted conscientiously; I thought she was meant for something better ...”