“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... in itself. The curator has small silver paws, very like the paws of the ermine in the painting Lady with Ermine, now on display in the nation’s other museum, which the visiting lecturer had been told was not worth visiting. After the tour, as they exit the storage room, an older man walks beside the curator whispering, Stop blushing, just be ...”

“... imagine what would have happened ‘if it had occurred to Lucrece to slap Tarquin’s face’. The lady who performs this virtuous gesture is revealed, in a graceful pay-off at the end, to be rather less chaste than the gesture implies. Her husband, who maintains a Beppo-like complaisance as long (and only as long) as he doesn’t know there is something to be ...”

“... has ruthlessly dumped in a disagreeable Home for aged persons; she contrives that the smelly old lady shall go on a visit to her daughter and then be refused readmittance to the Home on the score of an incontinence which Ruth has cleverly faked. Bobbo is an accountant. Ruth manages to insinuate herself covertly into his office and cook and confuse his books ...”

“... two-seater aeroplane and reclaimed their respective wives. (‘Quite like a sensational novel,’ Lady Sackville noted in her diary.) The relationship didn’t really end until some time in 1922. Wild oats are all very well, Vita wrote to Harold, but not ‘when they grow as high as a jungle’. Nigel Nicolson was three the year his mother eloped. Vita ...”

“... for in return. Leading examples of Scott’s oiling of royalty are his James V of Scotland in The Lady of the Lake (1809), Queen Caroline, consort of George II, as a healing principle of Mercy in The Heart of Midlothian (1818), and Queen Elizabeth I, epitome of successful English monarchs, in Kenilworth (1821). Sutherland is especially dismissive of ...”

“... Spanish – by no means the same as 1880s Madrid Spanish – to be second nature to her. The old lady completed new translations of both Noli Me Tangere and its even more savage 1891 sequel El Filibusterismo just before she died. In most respects, it is a huge advance over previous translations, handsomely laid out and with enough footnotes to be helpful ...”

“... he had little trouble in locating Britain’s middlebrow. He was curious enough to start reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover and conventional enough to throw it onto the fire when teased about it.The shortcoming of Ridley’s graceful, funny book is simply its form. Even the best royal biographies exaggerate the impact of monarchs on the fortunes of monarchy ...”

“... Pamela punctuates with hasty dashes when she recalls affecting scenes (her attendance at her lady’s deathbed; her new master’s ominously smiling approach to her, alone in her late mistress’s dressing-room, as she is finishing this very letter). Richardson eventually did away with these dashes. The original Pamela turns readily to colloquialism: she ...”

“... in doing this. I did not know a word of Hottentot, and could never therefore have explained to the lady what the object of my footrule could be; and I really dared not ask my worthy missionary host to interpret for me. I therefore felt in a dilemma as I gazed at her form, that gift of bounteous nature to this favoured race, which no mantua-maker, with all her ...”

“... A great Irish lady, her disgraced nephew and a young priest with strong Republican sympathies are driving through Dublin on St Patrick’s Day, 1916. ‘They were speaking of patriots, Dublin associations of famous rebels, ancient and modern.’ Merrion Square evokes the memory of a distinguished Irishman whom the English put on trial ...”

“... they enjoyed refighting the Reformation. Plays, paintings (famously Delaroche’s Execution of Lady Jane Grey), new editions of John Lingard’s revisionist History of England, as well as Pugin’s architectural manifesto Contrasts, all treated it as the determining event in national history. The facts were fiercely argued and at a popular level there was ...”

“... Cowper always found it hard to discover in the world was equally obscured in a letter he wrote to Lady Hesketh as the impeachment trial was due to begin in February 1788. In its sweeping, almost sublime gestures, and its descent into nostalgic regret for long lost adolescent loyalties, it bears witness to the small, incestuous world within whose confines ...”

“... refused to speak, then went along with the identification, then changed her mind after a former lady-in-waiting to the tsarina visited the asylum and said that Anna was too short to be Tatiana. But her supporters refused to give up on the idea of her being one of the grand duchesses. Because she wouldn’t speak, they gave her a list of the ...”