“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... young man, as we all waited. This was exciting. Was she referring to herself, or to the Persian lady who, I suddenly thought, far from being related to the Shah, might actually be hand-in-glove with mullahs and in a position to hand out death threats? Or was she indeed glamorous deposed royalty, with a personal bodyguard waiting at Heathrow who might do the ...”

“... at the House of Culture in Strasbourg, attended by Tim pretending to be Tom, and escorting Tom’s lady friend, the highly unalluring and modishly counter-cultural Angela De’ath. The exposition of great European Contributors to European thought Was ready, and tomorrow there would be an Official opening. Tim as Tom now ought To schlepp his ass ...”

“... idea of the restaurant at the end of the Universe is not a new one.) The tavern is run by an old lady, who dishes out ale, and in one version advice: eat, drink and be merry, and forget things which do not concern you. This character, who would not be out of place in a television soap opera, is sometimes equated with a minor goddess known as Shiduri. Only ...”

“... committed any scarlet sins they would have been made public long ago. His elderly infatuation with Lady Juliet Duff, subject of many epigrams, was probably no more than that, and Pearce has nothing to say about it, unlike Wilson. The death of his wife, after which he wore black for life, was a dividing mark in his career. There were fewer of those ...”

“... he ripped it off and tossed it to the tabloid press like a knight presenting a favour to his lady. Even in the sordid history of crimes against children the murders committed by Hindley . . . were uniquely evil . . . They abducted, terrified, tortured and killed their victims before burying their bodies on Saddleworth Moor . . . Her role in the ...”

“... GM techniques, as much as organic farming, are supposed to consign to history. (In 1962, the first lady of environmentalism, Rachel Carson, was enthusiastic, for just this reason, about the potential of the bio-insecticide B.t., now reviled for its alleged effect on certain butterflies.) Nor would my futurologist have witnessed the Third World famines of ...”

“... Yeats, Mr Dermod O’Brien, the President of the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts, and Lady Gerald Wellesley, the poetess’. In February 1947, my grandparents again made the trip to the South of France, accompanied this time by their teenage daughters. My mother recalled her intense excitement, and the ivory-framed sunglasses and frocks bought for ...”

“... the old Conservative working class, an indispensable element of its traditional electorate. And Lady Thatcher bears much of the responsibility for this. The last paradox is that her legacy to the Conservative Party has been so powerful that the party can do nothing about this failed strategy – other than hope for the best. Of the four men who succeeded ...”

“... in my new school.’ Or this strange statement from The Book of Illusions, when the hero’s new lady-friend begins to stroke her breasts, and to trail her fingertips along the inside of her thighs: ‘Hector was not immune to these classic provocations.’ Auster is at his best when he balances the enigmatic and the concrete, as in The Music of Chance ...”

“... the man who wrote to the motoring press urging drivers not to stop after an accident if they had a lady on board was Bernard Shaw. Speed worship began to infect hard-headed urban councils, as one town after another (and not just in Britain) began holding Grand Prix round-the-houses races, or even round-the-houses-and-into-the-trees races. And what sort of ...”

“... a trainee physiotherapist, a renowned doctor who had crossed the Atlantic on a raft, a socialist lady senator, a saxophonist etc. So we prepared for Greene’s visit as usual, although we forgot to put a coathanger in his room (cassocks are not supposed to be hung on coathangers), which apparently embarrassed him. When Greene arrived nobody asked any ...”

“... trouper, Roy Workman, and late in 1926 they set out for Europe calling themselves Lord and Lady Workman-Macnaghten of Belfast. How Louis met Myrtle is not clear, but he quickly detached her from Roy, whom she never divorced. In 1928, in a London Register Office, Myrtle Jones bigamously became Mme Darquier de Pellepoix, despised by Louis’s family and ...”

“... his conviction that the king was leading the country back to a Commonwealth or his description of Lady Denham, the Duke of York’s mistress, ‘bitchering’. For most of his married life, Evelyn lived at Sayes Court, Deptford, of which nothing at all remains. Apart from an idealised plan of the garden, only descriptions in letters and building accounts give ...”