“... 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 ...”

“... The only bad thing is the effect on Mrs Krantz’s personality. Until lately she was a nice Jewish lady harbouring the usual bourgeois fancies about the aristocracy. But now she gives interviews extolling her own hard head. ‘Like so many of us,’ she told the Daily Mail on 28 April, ‘I happen to believe that being young, beautiful and rich is more ...”

“... meant settling up, and the master sex counted out cash for the groceries in the knowledge that the lady might bolt with it. A drinker himself, he believed that ‘a woman who drank was not to be trusted.’ A loner, he had no trouble in taking strange women back to his flat and ‘cohabiting’ with them. Encounters and friendships of this kind open the ...”

“... lesbian, gaining full sway over lifeboat and crew and proclaiming the rule of women! This lady (presented in A Night to Remember as particularly efficient and helpful during the rescue) lakes her place in the poem as part of a transsexual montage which includes ‘the veiled millionaire disguised as a woman’ (Lord says ‘third-class passenger ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... as the Emperor Claudius’ mother, the subject of Antonia Augusta: Portrait of a Great Roman Lady, not to mention Lepidus, the Tarnished Triumvir) have been put through the biographical machine under Routledge’s auspices. But it cannot have been mere commercial pressure that induced the immensely knowledgeable, careful and scholarly Birley to concoct ...”

“... suffering. (His hatred of the Victorians did not extend to the poet who sang the praises of ‘Our Lady of Pain’.) Though the publicity material for this volume calls attention to the ‘shocking’ evidence of sado-masochism in his last serious affair, with Roger Senhouse, Strachey’s bent for victimisation is apparent long before the cheerful allusions to ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... it had been important for their initial success that not only was she not an artist, she was not a lady. Instead she was a star, the very first in her field. As such, she has inspired several star-biographies, of which Madsen’s is the latest. The biographies of Chanel that were attempted during her lifetime had to be given up, because interviewing her proved ...”

“... the social-financial Wharton and the artist for whose sake we are interested in the society lady with the formidable wealth. The reader of Benstock’s book may soon wish to go back to Lewis’s Edith Wharton: A Biography (1975). It was Lewis who first told us about Wharton’s affair with Fullerton and who printed the puzzling erotic text of ...”

“... in other words, had gone through the curriculum laid down in “A Letter to a Very Young Lady” and had emerged with first-class honours.’ But this is no sneer; Ehrenpreis, an honourable professor, is not cadgingly crying down his line of work. He is aware that education is not the be-all and end-all, but it is at least a begin-all, of life. Much ...”