“... together at writing, I’ll write comedies and you can write your dreams, and since there’s a lady who comes to see papa and always says stupid things I’ll write them too.’ At the age of ten, Flaubert signs off, ‘Your dauntless dirty-minded friend till death’. At 13 he is attacking theatre censorship and restrictions on press freedom: the ...”

“... director of the Royal College of Music, and on his liking for women students, especially a young lady who evidently became a musical power in Dublin, a pianist called Edith Oldham. The virtue-laden mutton-chop whiskers of Victorian photographs offer a great temptation to debunk. Grove had an unhappy marriage. His wife, he claimed, was cold and, worse, took ...”

“... audience was definitely not high-brow – indeed the former is a body whose usual faire is Lady Nairne’s songs or a demonstration of country dancing … one fat comfortable elderly wife … took every point in the most unexpected way … you certainly got them.’ Yet they are ill at ease with being rarefied: ‘I’m not really a literary ...”

“... for several years. Nevertheless, Thatcher went on to win elections in 1983 and 1987. Her the-lady’s-not-for-turning episode was an inspiration for Liz Truss during her short and calamitous stay in 10 Downing Street. Truss, unfortunately, wasn’t aware that on the issue of monetarism, the lady was for turning.It’s ...”

“... became more formalised in the early 20th century, and in 1915 the Waifs and Strays appointed a ‘lady visitor’ to check on girls after they left the homes. Children sent overseas (migration to Canada continued until 1930) were less well cared for and little effort was made to ensure they transitioned successfully into adult life. ‘I am doing ...”

“... Bacon. Buckingham renovated his homes at great expense and shared them with his wife, the heiress Lady Katherine Manners, daughter of the earl of Rutland. They had four children, three of whom survived. Buckingham invited Balthazar Gerbier, an architect and painter, into his household, and Gerbier began to amass an enviable collection of Italian and Dutch ...”

“... the chancel of St George’s Church. According to the parish register she was ‘A virginia Lady borne’ as well as John Rolfe’s wife, Rebecca. (In 1635 their son, Thomas, raised in England, returned to Virginia where he became a successful tobacco planter.) Sometimes the ancestral homes of native visitors were destroyed by fire and farming, their ...”

“... of many things, and would not lift a finger to move a bucket of coal if there was an old lady on hand to do it. But surely he should have had the OM? The brothers seem to have been agreed on this point. And the Nobel Prize for Literature? Snow ‘could not be blamed for hoping’. A year or two earlier Private Eye had scurrilously suggested that ...”

“... than simply manipulative). It is very disappointing to find that she has so little to say on the Lady Dhuoda, a noblewoman of the ninth century who wrote a book of moral precepts for her son. Dr McKitterick says that the book shows Dhuoda as being ‘well-read and cultured’, but we really ought to be given an idea of the nature of that culture. It is a ...”

“... technique with the governing boards may be guessed by reading a recent newspaper letter from Lady Cottesloe, commending her husband’s skill in dealing with ‘that lovable prima donna, Laurence Olivier’. Olivier has also written a book, Confessions of an Actor, in which he confesses that he was displeased at being succeeded, without consultation, by ...”

“... appointed manager of Hartlepool United. Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman will be much missed. A feisty lady with a good left hook ... shrill of voice and short of temper. I have been keeping her for years. And so on. We still await a British version of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail and it is probably too much to hope that those who write our election ...”

“... foot. Another of the new poems, ‘The Earthenware Head’, coolly deflates Plath’s poem ‘The Lady and the Earthenware Head’, criticising her compositional methods as strategies of evasion: You ransacked thesaurus in your poem about it, Veiling its mirror, rhyming yourself into safety… A lot of the poems in Birthday Letters set about an unveiling of ...”

“... than others, and there is a dispiriting amount of antiquing going on, as in ‘My garments, good lady,’ and ‘I was a poor servant girl, possessed nothing but the curse of youthful beauty,’ and ‘The old fellow has essayed too much this time.’ This doesn’t stop the old fellow wearing a parka, so you wonder how Wideman is seeing these scenes. But ...”

“... acquired a tendency to fall in love with every woman that I meet,’ he tells one unperturbed lady. The familiar Storeyan CV is reviewed as the ghosts crowd in. Fenchurch has dialogues with his miner father, who explains: ‘I’ve tried to save you from working on your belly eight hours of the day or night, with two hundred yards of rock above your ...”

“... a new triplet in the Prologue: The country lip may have the velvet touch; Though she’s no lady you may think her such, (A strong imagination may do much.) Such ease is all the more remarkable because Dryden’s first efforts were decidedly clumsy, although they demonstrate the instant ability to make use of every poetic style then current, from ...”