“... sinks a little: ‘by herself and Barnet Litvinoff’ seems to imply the indulgence of a grand old lady’s imperious vanity. ‘Russia was untamed and beautiful, disciplined yet ungovernable ...’ What, 229 pages of that? Yes, but she quickly wins the reader over by her courage, her curiosity, her keen sense of irony, and even by her racy, chiaroscuro ...”

“... Rota, as Enrico, proved himself a master of the art of shouting.’ ‘There is a lady [in the Duke of Saxe-Coburg Gotha’s opera Santa Chiara] in whom “pride of rank transcendeth”, who is poisoned by her husband. She dies temporarily, after the manner of Juliet, is canonised, and appears subsequently as a saint, after which her husband ...”

“... and his stepfather, George Wyndham, a Byronically dashing soldier-poet. Bend’Or’s mother, Lady Sibell Lumley, was so beautiful – although, some felt, a bit silly – she was the toast of London: her brother said that after her first husband’s early death 80 men were in love with her. After being unhappy at prep school (where he was, as the ...”

“... with a male detective in mind: it was only in the course of writing that the pterodactyl-like lady, twice widowed, and a psychoanalyst by profession, took over. Mrs Bradley – who is apt to provoke a suspect by giving him a good poke in the ribs – is nothing if not unorthodox in her investigative procedures. The early Mitchell novels (some of which ...”

“... has a central role but is passive compared to minor characters like his grandmother, a sparky lady who manages to fool the doctor and rise from the dead – on the funeral pyre, after the fire has been lit on her chest – the genial terrorist Jagadish, and the charmingly brusque heroine Bharati. These were followed by such novels as The Guide and The ...”

“... recognises, partly because he is spending much of his time thinking about Generosa, his ‘Cuban lady’. Gradually the delicate balance between reality, memory and dream shifts in favour of the latter pair, and by the final pages the fusion is complete: the old man cuts loose and drifts off into a reality that no one would dare call confused or ...”

“... gowns’), he met not only Castro but the ‘strong, vital, buoyant’ Che Guevara and ‘a lady with a sad, beautiful face’, whom he and Nowell recognised as Dolores Ibárruri, better known as La Pasionaria. He was among his own people, big people. His admiration for Communism was inseparable from his worship of power. Not for nothing was The ...”

“... of reform’ and may have been implicated (with other members of his family) in support for Lady Jane Grey and in Thomas Wyatt’s rebellion against Mary of 1553-54: perhaps this was one of the reasons he fled England shortly afterwards. No less formative was the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre in 1572, when thousands of Protestants were slaughtered by ...”

“... but also to show off. Her agent remembered Wilder’s drafts as the narration of a ‘fine old lady … sitting in a rocking chair and telling a story chronologically but with no benefit of perspective or theatre’ until Lane intervened, adding dialogue, cutting and rearranging scenes, getting rid of characters or turning them into composites. To add ...”

“... this time in full-on mystic maniac mode – to take part in a séance in Atlantic City, at which Lady Doyle attempted to summon Houdini’s mother. Through Doyle, Cecilia spoke, with the faint, ethereal diction of a spirit: ‘Thank you, with all my heart for this … My only shadow has been that my beloved one hasn’t known how often I’ve been with ...”

“... the collision between tradition and modernity, which was evident enough in the nation of Yeats and Lady Gregory. It is typically the work of literal or internal émigrés, men and women caught on the hop between different cultures and languages. If literary modernism is the point at which language comes to be about language, taking itself as the object of its ...”

“... Henry VIII had used it to justify his deeply self-righteous claim that he had never married a lady called Katherine of Aragon, and that God was very angry with him, both for having mistakenly thought that he had done so, and for allowing the pope to provide a dispensation for the marriage to take place, against ius divinum. Non-residence was thus fatally ...”

“... An examination of what must have been Titian’s first major commission, the landscape with ‘Our Lady going into Egypt’, neglected by most modern accounts of Titian (it emerged from a long process of restoration in the Hermitage and was exhibited at the National Gallery shortly before this book was printed), makes the argument all the more ...”

“... des Arts et Métiers in Paris, he writes, ‘there was one curious device’: The figure of a lady less than a foot high and wearing a gorgeous dress was seated on a piano stool in an attractive pose. When a key was wound, she glanced gently to left and right and her hands struck the keys lightly to produce a melody. She looked so lifelike to us as we ...”

“... say, because a lot cannier, is the one on the upper floor of a village inn in Mary E. Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862). The scheming protagonist ventures along it in search of the room occupied by her husband’s nephew, Robert, who is hot on her (bigamous) trail. ‘She stopped and looked at the number on the door. The key was in the lock, and her ...”