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“... on the whole runs well, and it is enlivened by pretty quotations. (Chuang-tzu: ‘Men say that the Lady Di is beautiful; but if the fish could see her they would dive to the bottom of the river.’) But it is demanding. Schwartz assumes that you know the geography of China and are reasonably familiar with the outlines of its early history; and he presupposes ...”

“... wonderful light, Bill,’ I said to the Texan next to me. ‘Yes,’ he affirmed; and the Indian lady murmured: ‘Yes.’ Three exiles. No more was said; and the others, Londoners, did not even know what we had understood ... When people ask, I feel like saying ‘It’s a brilliant country; they’re a brilliant people, just at the beginning of the ...”

“... dame of American letters, deferentially hired by Ford to suggest names for new models. The great lady glitters into a world wholly composed of things. ‘I have a knife held by two nails flat to the casing of my kitchen china closet. It has a blade about eight inches long, of high-grade steel, joined to an ebony handle by a collar of brass – trade-marked ...”

“... abode in Surrey. He replied that he only went to stay at other people’s houses with his wife (Lady Dorothy, daughter of the Duke of Devonshire). Silence ensued. He never spent a night at Cherkeley, though he never quarrelled with Lord Beaverbrook. The fascinating problem about the careers of those who get to the top in politics is the turning-point, the ...”

“... particular ethnic group ... At that point a senior member of the Authority, an immensely shrewd lady of normally equable disposition began to remonstrate angrily. She wanted to know how the officer could possibly dare to come before a Committee of the Authority and tell elected members that there were any criteria to be considered other than the quality of ...”

“... cripple than this tough, resourceful, resilient, responsible, dashing, candid and very funny lady; or look less like one. The portrait photograph on the jacket was taken when she was 92: she looks a spry 60, with a squashy Russian nose in a broad Russian face, untidy hair, and a most appealing expression in which serenity and benevolent curiosity ...”

“... but the supporting cast – brilliant willowy Edmund, working-class Marxist Alan, aristocratic Lady Fanthorpe, and so on – are cardboard. The Sixties setting is painted by numbers: dolly-birds and miniskirts, boys that look like ‘Terry’ Stamp, much twisting to early Beatles songs. At its worst, the book’s assertions are either palpably absurd ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... you felt you must be guilty, even though you did not know your crime.’ I asked the elderly lady in the coffee house of the Paris Hotel in Prague what had got better and what had got worse since the velvet revolution. ‘Everything has got worse and will get worse still,’ she replied, ‘except for one thing. For the first time in fifty years I do not ...”

“... it to your father ... He won’t talk about it. It was a wartime thing.’ Although, according to Lady Hickman, formerly Mrs Thatcher, ‘Friends do say we look rather alike,’ Carol explains that her mother detests the comparison, wishing to consign the entire affair to history. Denis’s memory, however, is quite sharp about that period of his life. When ...”

“... much of the documentation of proletarian life stems from sanitary inspectors, settlement workers, lady visitors and other philanthropists whose self-appointed mission to darkest London was to help the poor to become clean and decent, regular and respectable, and who, for that reason, saw them as unkempt, ungodly and unwashed, recklessly filling the world with ...”

“... privilege to examine the secret financial relationships of MPs. Summoning his allies, including Lady Thatcher and Lord Archer in the House of Lords, Hamilton inspired an amendment to the Defamation Act then going through Parliament. The amendment, which was drummed through both Houses by the Tory majority, who behaved exactly as if they were being ...”

“... to the Gulf. I find the absence of Bucket ‘n’ Mop or Meat-Packin’ Barbies, let alone Bag Lady or Total Acne Barbies, more predictable than Rand seems to do. Fantasy doesn’t require manipulation to tend upward, even as far as the glass ceiling of female achievement; and a mass-market doll has no call to be an inventory of reality, just as the ...”

“... new and stylish ideological fantasy, notably in the recast tales of The Bloody Chamber. Her ‘Lady of the House of Love’, one of the items in this wide-ranging anthology, begins by making a skilfully precise use of the Gothic standby in which normality and enlightenment seem to have triumphed, but can one be quite sure? ‘At last the revenants became ...”

“... Diana Cooper to think of him as boringly tethered by fatherhood. He would also not have wished his lady-friend’s attention to be distracted from his own interesting personal development. Even so, it does seem that his dislike of young Auberon was genuine, (‘I think I must have been a difficult child to like,’ says the obliging Bron. And here, too, he was ...”