“... a moment for grief, or for hope of a new world to come? The abbey, dedicated to that same Lady Mary, was soon given over to demolition, not least by the townsfolk of Evesham, who were not displeased to acquire an apparently inexhaustible supply of good building stone. The 35 monks put down from their seats in the abbey choir were assured of a pension ...”

“... produced a little ring-casket, a memento that she had received that morning from the estate of Lady Ottoline Morrell. This must have been, allowing for the usual delay involved in probate, some time around the spring of 1939 – Lady Ottoline had died in the April of 1938. The foreheads of the two women almost touched as ...”

“... main character, Albert Campion, is a toff, but her female characters had proper jobs: Lady Amanda Fitton, Campion’s eventual wife, is an aircraft designer, and his sister, Val, worked in fashion, as we learn in The Fashion in Shrouds (great title). Val marries a good man, Alan Dell, with the following deal: he will take ‘full responsibility ...”

“... of 1976.It all began because Bloom put an advertisement in the Irish Times: ‘Wanted, smart lady typist to aid gentleman in literary work.’ It seemed that this was code for something else. The letter Bloom received – he was using the pseudonym Henry Flower – from a woman called Martha Clifford in the Lotus-Eaters episode was suggestive: ‘I have ...”

“... ahead to do the honours and leave with the nurses on a French charter flight (was she the ‘new Lady Di?’, Le Figaro wondered; she and Sarkozy split up soon afterwards). Guéant and Sarkozy followed her to Tripoli, tying up loose ends and exploring their rapprochement with Gaddafi. In return for the hostage release, money flowed to Libya, from the ...”

“... just a photographer. He designed, too. Oklahoma, things like that.’ ‘I think it was My Fair Lady, maam.’ ‘Oh, was it?’ said the Queen, unused to being contradicted. ‘Where did you say you worked?’ She put the book back in the boy’s big red hands. ‘In the kitchens, maam.’ She had still not solved her problem, knowing that if she left ...”

“... enjoyed writing that. But they all came from different rungs of the social ladder. At the top was Lady Gregory, who had a big house and plenty of tenants; and then Synge, who had a small private income, as Beckett and Wilde did, and a memory of glory; and then Yeats, who worked all his life, not only for his living, but at making himself grander than he ...”

“... ambiguity, the ambiguity of poetic language itself. Thus the Holocaust imagery in poems like ‘Lady Lazarus’ and ‘Daddy’, which Rose analyses in brilliant detail, has to be seen both in the contexts of Plath’s longtime political concerns and in relation to the traces in language and writing of her unconscious fantasies and her personal ...”

“... and David married Tap’s dim daughter, Sydney. David and Sydney did not know how to be Lord and Lady Redesdale: perhaps, as Highland Fling suggests, no one quite knew what lords and ladies were for after 1918. The dim Redesdales produced the six Mitford girls, so bright and silly, as well as an overshadowed son (killed in action). The parents will be ...”

“... down and identifying a supporting cast of thousands. Did Shaw covertly admire a young Scandinavian lady at a tea-party given by one of his advanced admirers, Bertha Newcombe? Weintraub can tell us that Nellie Erichsen lived at 6 Trafalgar Studios, Manresa Road, Chelsea, illustrated several volumes of the ‘Highways and Byways’ series and translated a number ...”

“... of the Aquarium, Captain Molesworth by name, had the hoardings posted with pictures of the young lady in the ordinary attire of a gymnast and of another performer named Paula. Richard Roberts had castigated the Royal Aquarium as ‘a jumble of degrading entertainments of various kinds’. Had the writer intended the contrast between Zao’s nightly ...”

“... Byron’s slippers from a man in Missolonghi, on behalf of Byron’s very odd great-granddaughter Lady Wentworth. Along with other excerpts from his books and pieces of journalism (including his own account of the Kreipe affair), this story is collected in Words of Mercury, which provides a good taster of what Leigh Fermor’s writing has to offer. That is ...”

“... Rainbow, and End as a Man, Young Torless, Cavafy and others bizarrer, Lord Weary, Das Schloss, Lady Windermere’s Fan ... The nymphomaniac pensioners in ‘The Sexy Old Ladies of Havergo Hall’ are less discriminating in their pursuit of pleasure: If it breathes, and wears trousers, they move in ...”

“... when remembering those times, often describing them as the best in their lives. Even the one old lady who hadn’t a good word to say about Wright coloured and became unwontedly animated at the memories of battles ...”

“... she lorded it over the locals, and occasionally performed. One impresario remembers a ‘grand old lady’ singing ‘Vissi d’arte’ in a cabaret there. Writes Enrico Jr: ‘He praised her singing and asked: “You have been an opera singer, no?” She told him with pride: “Yes. I am Giachetti.” ’ A complex, performative utterance: I am Giachetti. The ...”