“... when he wrote a goodbye letter to his wife he assured her that her successor would also be ‘a ...”

“... enables the author to assemble a good collection of anecdotes and bon mots. One Edwardian Co. Cork lady, for instance, was in the habit of sliding down the stairs on a tray, wearing pink tights, and the wife of a Louth baronet had a passion for donkeys. Boredom during a church service could be alleviated by jabbing with a hatpin at the people in front. The ...”

“... large, ungainly, half-deaf artist’ – shortish, rather plump but neat is the general account. Lady Warkworth’s husband is said to have been ‘created Count Percy’: in fact the Earldom (sic) was conferred on this man’s father, though he used it as a courtesy title. Arthur Murphy is transmogrified into ‘Arthur Murray’, whilst Ms Lesley Lewis ...”

“... another woman was involved. Some assumed it was Dickens’s sister-in-law, Georgina Hogarth. This lady suffered the indignity of a virginity test, to disprove what would have been incest as well as adultery. Those closer to Dickens knew better. ‘No such thing – it’s with an actress,’ Thackeray told his mother, adding: ‘It’s a fatal story for our ...”

“... of one artist who still can’t bear to leave: ‘He did well by us, but now he’s like an old lady in the attic. He’s failed but he won’t give up. For us it’s over; the Revolution’s a piece of kitsch.’ Guillermo Cabrera Infante uses the term as well, but for him it’s the ‘kitsch of death’, and his obsession with Cuba’s Castro is a lot ...”

“... quite obviously not enough. It is extraordinary that anyone can have thought, as some followers of Lady Thatcher have thought and perhaps in a few cases still do think, that mere equality in the face of the market could realise enough of an idea of equal citizenship to make anything work, including the market itself. Sen’s theory of equality does yield an ...”

“... available to her ambition is the role of fortune-hunter and knight-errant (she hankers to be ‘Lady Errant’), the mobility that even in romance is reserved for men alone. As she herself concedes when fiercely denying she ‘was seen in man’s apparel ... in designe to do mischief’, she has attempted an impossible crossing of boundaries. McKeon ...”

“... from the fact that she lived with Lytton Strachey. Hostesses, he went on, like the Asquiths and Lady Colefax, who welcomed Strachey, ‘would no more have invited Carrington than the cook’. Knowing her very well, he thought she was a complex and original character in a strange situation, but did not say what effect on her the strange situation had. Dora ...”

“... Henry Ash in a copy of one of Ash’s books in the London Library. The letters address an unknown lady; they are suggestive of intellectual, and perhaps other kinds of passion; and Roland, from motives obscure to himself but none the less compelling, steals them. He does not tell Blackadder; he does not tell Val, the woman with whom he damply and gloomily ...”

“... stunning girl with the blonde halo? Can it be possible she is still alive? So the lovely, fat old lady, resurrected, becomes a staple of film festivals. She is in a position of absolute security. Fame has come too late to bewilder or corrupt; it can only console. She is something better than a star. She is an eternal flame in the holy church of cinema. Brooks ...”

“... episode that almost everyone would consider as in itself sexist, the trick Panurge plays upon the Lady of Paris who refuses his advances? He sprinkles her gown with ground-up pieces of genitals of a bitch in heat and then withdraws to watch the sport, as all the male dogs of Paris assemble to piss on her, head to toe ... Her offence, remember, is simply that ...”

“... of one who was, even then, engaged in a bitter law-suit with Jane Austen’s brother. Neither lady, perhaps, saw the other at her most amiable. If Honan were as devout an Anglican as Charles Austen, he might have made more sense of the ‘defensive congratulations’ that attended Charles’s marriage to his deceased wife’s sister. In 1820 such unions ...”

“... in that area: Rachel Stires was pleasant looking in a skinny, country nutty, windburned lollypop-lady son of way. She had her hair pulled back in a heavy ponytail, and wore velour track suits and plastic flower-shaped earrings of the kind people used to throw darts and shoot down ping-pong balls to win at travelling fairs. I brought bottles of Blue Nun to ...”

“... on the head. But whereas we used to let them grow up, allowing Liszt (if not Liberace) to become a lady-killer as well as a full-fledged artist, we no longer do. In fact, we see all men as infantile – all variations on a sitcom mentality (from Father Knows Best to Men Behaving Badly) that acknowledges feminist rage without questioning masculine privilege. We ...”

“... she had tackled Johnson at the ball following Kennedy’s inauguration. LBJ first told her that Lady Bird was worried about his health and that a quiet spell would suit them both. Mrs Luce (as she told the story) snorted in disbelief: ‘Lyndon, come clean.’ Lyndon leaned closer: ‘Clare darling, I looked it up. One out of every four Presidents has died ...”