“... 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 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... family we know that this went on for some time. The leading member of the next generation, Lady Grisell Baillie, whose household books have long been known, had a remarkably rapid turnover of servants. Some stayed only one night, and the average length of stay has been calculated at three weeks. One explanation is readily available from the social ...”

“... outside the windows, and you could smell them. There were insects, too. Good insects, crickets and lady-bugs. Owens had purchased ten thousand and released them into the yard.’ This is the dream squared: though Owens is not a media mogul, he has something of the absurd hubris of the great days of Hollywood, the world of colossal, innocent artifice. He keeps ...”

“... a century earlier, the most famous mesmeric invalid had been Harriet Martineau, a powerful single lady and popular journalist. She had had to take to her bed with what was believed to be uterine cancer, and was eventually persuaded to try mesmeric healing. After a number of treatments from different people her health improved dramatically; more, she underwent ...”

“... for female beauty remained Margaret Lockwood, Hitchcock’s other early star (so good in The Lady Vanishes), whose top eyelids were sootily shadowed, mascara’d and lined, but whose lower lids remained untouched. Elsie’s eyeliner days were long behind her; her grooming consisted of Pond’s Cold Cream, a spritz of L’Air du Temps and a dab of Max ...”

“... institute. But going ‘up West’ to South Ken she enjoyed the attentions of doctors and their lady wives, barristers, broadcasters and scientists. The daughter of a plumber and gas-fitter, she had the Countess Nora eating out of her hand.Inevitably the scene darkens. More and more sittings; more elaborate and invasive tests of authenticity. Alma strips ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... really meant. ‘I said just now that Signor Crespi’s portrait’ – a painting of a lady now in the National Gallery in London and agreed to be a Titian, but proposed by Berenson as a copy of a Giorgione – had a certain family resemblance to the one of the former Doetsch Collection. There, however, barring morphological details, the likeness ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... playing cards in an Outdoor Party by Esaias van de Velde. The precise message of Gerrit Dou’s Lady at Her Toilet might be difficult to articulate, but the mirror and open bird-cage suggest that we are looking at a commentary on vanity and desire – assuming, of course, that Dou meant us to recall both the vanitas associations of mirrors and the fact that ...”