“... momentarily consider turning back. ‘We will proceed no further in this business,’ he tells Lady Macbeth, to which she replies: ‘Was the hope drunk/wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since? … Art thou afeard/to be the same in thine own act and valour/as thou art in desire?’ There is no acknowledgment of Macbeth’s misgivings, only ...”

“... in the year, has learned some new poems. So in the darkness of a Penarth bedroom this 90-year-old lady recites Housman’s ‘Loveliest of trees, the cherry now’ and Browning’s ‘Home-Thoughts, from Abroad’. And not a fluff in either.8 August. It is the day after the Tottenham riots and waiting for a prescription in the pharmacy in Camden High Street I ...”

“... Bill Styron becomes the literary darling of Camelot, yachting with the president and the First Lady, who dispense with formalities. ‘We were sitting around a big table in the open cockpit and occasionally she would put her feet up in JFK’s lap and wiggle her toes, just like you’d imagine the wife of the president to do.’ With his famous bugle-call ...”

“... became the most popular playwright of the Edwardian age. There were a few false starts, but Lady Frederick was an unexpected hit in 1907, and soon he had four plays running simultaneously in London. Most of his drawing-room comedies have been forgotten, although The Constant Wife, The Circle and For Services Rendered are said to stand up quite well. And ...”

“... a Doll’s House (1996), chronicling the dissolution of the marriage with the wounded stoicism of Lady Marchmain, Updike noted with a shrug: ‘And to think that my friendly little review broke it up. Well, you never …’With the villainous Gore Vidal (said with utmost respect), there was never a falling out because there was never a falling in. He and ...”

“... in a new key the suspended, blocked lives of the subjects of his early poems, Mariana or the Lady of Shalott. FitzGerald thought he was suffering from a poet’s ‘hereditary tenderness of nerve’, a phrase that makes Holmes wonderexactly what was the nature of that illness? Some kind of deep depressive mourning, perhaps – going right back to his ...”

“... even today. The court and then the public learned that the marriage was unconsummated, but that Lady Russell had nevertheless given birth to a son and was shown to have had several lovers. The Daily Mirror had a photo of Lord John Russell ‘In Women’s Guise’ after evidence had been heard about his cross-dressing, and the Express (owned by the ...”

“... of pleasant or indignant humour’. In 1978 Cecil Beaton attributes to the society philanthropist Lady Anne Tree ‘an oversize personality and character – rorty, Hogarthian and with exquisite understanding of character’, and in 2003 a writer in the Economist evokes a ‘Hogarthian throng of cheerful tradesmen and naughty ’prentice boys’. ‘March of ...”

“... warm and pretend to be busy. The financial pages are ‘in brisk demand’. One nicely-spoken old lady wears a fur coat pinned with diaper pins and gym shoes with no laces. The social history of Howland’s stories is focused on several generations of a single Jewish family. A long-dead great-grandmother from Romania wore gypsy scarves and earrings and read ...”

“... from that made by his predecessor, Alexandra Shulman, whose mother had co-authored a book called Lady Behave: A Guide to Modern Manners. Shulman writes in her memoir that she only needs to ‘put on a Chanel jacket and a pair of heels and immediately I can be seen … as somebody who, at some point, edited Vogue’.Vogue had, of course, played a huge part in ...”

“... ships, such as Plover, Herald, Enterprise, Investigator, Resolute, Intrepid, Assistance, Pioneer, Lady Franklin, Sophia, Felix, Advance, Rescue, Prince Albert, Isabel, Phoenix, Talbot, Fox. Then there are innumerable place-names, often the names of powerful personages scattered around the Arctic wastes like confetti and made confusing by repetition: Viscount ...”

“... If SS Jerome or Ambrose or Augustine or any of the grim Fathers had been watching television in spring this year, they wouldn’t have had much trouble seeing Marlene Dietrich for what she was. Those lids, those lips, that pillowy mink, those sidelong glances, those shimmering legs and – above all – that voice, would have rendered her lightly accented modern English as plain as the Latin of the Mass to the patriarchs and their friends and forerunners in the penitential Thebaid ...”

“... and New College? Not on your life. One of the ironies of the whole episode was that the Iron Lady’s champions appealed to a set of conventions that she had done more than any other British politician to consign to the dustbin. Those who sow conviction politics must also reap them. Indeed our vote was not a snub at all, but an accolade, a recognition ...”

“... rather than inverted commas, are largely banal, as are the other conversations which the old lady holds with her female companion. But a mystery, dealing with two broken marriages, emerges between the half-lines. Why did the old lady’s husband desert her, after some unspecified misconduct in Italy? Why has her son ...”

“... the muzzle of his assault rifle to the temple of Mr Chuckles or Her Most Exalted Highness the Lady Griselda, smiled for the birdie, and had Angela take a picture before he splattered their craniums.’ There can’t be many people who’ll read this without thinking of Private Lynndie England. ‘I’ve been getting questions about Abu Ghraib and 9/11 ...”