“... partly the function of her very creditable willingness to listen to him, a redeeming virtue in the lady but not enough! Instructively, since most of Clark’s judgments are morally sound, he is also nice about John Major, who tries to be helpful. He gets on with left-wing Labour men like the tirelessly depressing Bob Cryer, but does so ...”

“... famous trio of this time, William Cavendish, fifth Duke of Devonshire, his wife Georgiana and Lady Elizabeth Foster, concealed their goings-on and their miscellaneous progeny in the grand seclusion of Chatsworth and Devonshire House. Less socially-exalted, the Hamiltons and Nelson were at once more notorious and far more vulnerable. All three were ...”

“... exploded: ‘I have waited five weeks for a decision and I can’t wait any longer. I shall tell Lady Allenby to come home.’ Lloyd George took him by the arm and said, ‘You have waited five weeks, Lord Allenby, wait five minutes more.’ Fuming, Allenby waited – and got what he wanted. Allenby’s emancipatory decree, like others elsewhere, turned out ...”

“... She also disliked and distrusted Bloomsbury gossip. Fry had been having a lightning affair with Lady Ottoline Morrell, about which he had dropped hints to Virginia. Vanessa didn’t mind the affair – she seems to have been naturally lacking in feelings of envy and jealousy – but she cautioned her lover against telling her sister anything. I found she ...”

“... of rain, or suffering asthma from the humid heat, to talk to them. The target might be a white lady or a black preacher or a student of Mississippi rednecks, whose dress and speech habits are here fastidiously registered. Or it might be somebody who can instruct Naipaul in the country music centred on Nashville, for that music, of which he says he ...”

“... maiden aunt, you have come to call ...’), ‘Ariel’, ‘Nick and me Candlestick’, ‘Lady Lazarus’ and many others. They are poems written at a high pitch, without decoration, but fully under control. The ‘blood jet’ of her poetry stopped only when (in Dr Horder’s terms) she allowed the body to govern the mind. Her exhaustion, her ...”

“... Liberal ranks and marched them towards the sound of gunfire. It seemed a risible endeavour, with Lady Violet Bonham-Carter and remnants of the Liberal ascendancy shoulder-to-shoulder with a street-wise generation of young Liberals who cared little for conventional politics. Grimond would catch the Speaker’s eye as the Chamber emptied and speak ...”

“... subject. Yet it is now given out that Andy was judgmental all along, nipping off secretly to Our Lady of the Perpetual Whatever to abase himself weekly, and helping out with soup-runs and such whenever he wasn’t over-committed elsewhere. At his memorial in St Patrick’s Cathedral, some of the better-heeled mourners made much of this life of occluded ...”

“... candlelit. Even though some of this is tongue-in-cheek (of a piece with calling Eliza’s cleaning lady Grace Poole, a name derived not only from Bertha Mason’s ‘keeper’ in Jane Eyre, but from Dr Jekyll’s servant in the source), its effect is to undermine the story’s metaphysical dimension. On the other hand, the Notting Hill setting can be seen in ...”

“... was anecdotal – indeed largely built on the evidence of one anecdote, of the little old lady who ‘finds excreta pushed through her letterbox’ and is pursued by ‘charming wide-grinning piccaninnies’ chanting ‘Racist’ – and the imagery apocalyptic. Yet the whole was served up within a carapace of systematic reasoning. Politically, the ...”

“... did that awful thing described in the ‘Salad Days’ section of My Life as a Man to a young lady under the ping-pong table, yelping ‘good shot’ and ‘nice return’ to allay her parents next door, will be disappointed. The Facts contains not a single lavatorial or sex scene. No family liver is profaned. Roth, being Roth, cannot keep the facts he ...”

“... control. They have preferred to lobby and telephone and issue threats behind the scenes. The Iron Lady, however, prefers more direct methods. Hence the packing of the BBC’s Board of Governors, the appointment of reliable trusties to the chairmanship and deputy chairmanship of the BBC, the destruction of the ITV monopoly, the draconian replacement proposed ...”

“... the pauper and ‘little Margaret Rose’ was as often invoked around our council estate as ‘Our Lady’ in Naples. Scarcely a girl had not kept a cuttings-book of her magazine pictures. Early earmarked as naughty Madcap Meg of the royal soap, she infiltrated the proletarian unconscious so deeply that I had sexy dreams about her even after I had escaped to ...”

“... shade, demoted to the background of the picture, their way barred by the crowded diggings. A young lady distributes tracts. A crazed herb-seller moves anxiously forward. Carlyle himself is there, on the sidelines, looking curiously furtive. Central to the picture is its heroine, her poised gesture reflecting that of the valiant workman who stands behind ...”

“... fantasy – the gruff dads, with their tools and their guileless dungarees. At the end of Lady Chatterly’s Lover Mellors tells Connie that everything would be all right if men sang and danced every evening, dressed in tight red trousers. Bly, who likes his Lawrence, can think of nothing to do about the modern landscape except turn away from it. Iron ...”