“... Russian bogatyr, the warrior landowner who performs feats of strength and daring, even rescuing a lady from an evil enchanter, a neighbouring landlord. Old myth slipped more easily into 19th-century Russia’s world of serfs and powerful gentry than any attempt at Medieval and Arthurian revival could in industrial England. In Oblomov Goncharov turned his ...”

“... artists merely toyed with the concept of politeness, playing it off as style against content – Lady Booby’s and Slipslop’s genteelisms against their Mandevillian desires. In the Harlot’s Progress this was Moll Hackabout’s ladylike politeness in serving tea after stealing a watch from her customer, or the silk gown she wears in Bridewell while ...”

“... choosing both in different branches of a branching cosmos. It will interest many others only as Lady Chatterley’s Lover interested the reviewer in the American Field and Stream: ‘This fictional account of the day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper contains many passages on pheasant raising, ways to control vermin, and other chores and ...”

“... Massachusetts Avenue that I used to frequent, as much because I was intrigued by the little old lady with a green parakeet on her shoulder who owned the place (she was reputed to be Whitehead’s daughter or niece), as because I was always in the market for a set of Conrad, Parkman or Scott. One day I went into the tiny shop just as she was saying to a ...”

“... of the costume code defining the ‘normal’ woman. In Katherine Mansfield’s ‘The Advanced Lady’, straitlaced German feminists denounce women who smother their femininity under what one calls the ‘English tailor-made’ and another the ‘lying garb of false masculinity’. Discreetly masculine garb adorns a long line of fictional women from the ...”

“... was much in fashion at that time. It provided the most passionate coupling enjoyed by Mellors and Lady Chatterley, and their story was being written at the very moment these discussions were going on. Breton’s revulsion at the thought of sexual congress between males was certainly no simple gut reaction, whatever unconscious motives he may or may not have ...”

“... the small boy who asks: ‘Mamma, is that alive? ... I want that, mamma, I want that dear little lady.’ There are moments when nastier desires enter, as Miss M is followed down a village street, and sees on some of the watching faces ‘an expression that was not solely curiosity ... a kind of hunger, a dog-like gleam’. But for the most part the ...”

“... their fierce free market policies in Chile. Again in March, Pinochet was able to meet his admired Lady Thatcher, at a British Embassy cocktail party, when she was in Santiago to promote her book: she congratulated him on local television for anticipating her own economic reforms. In Italy, Northern League members of Silvio Berlusconi’s cabinet recently ...”

“... To call this book one-eyed would be an overstatement. If Brecht had ever in his life helped an old lady across the road (doubtful, but still), don’t look for an account of the circumstance in Fuegi; but if someone somewhere had accused him of eating babies, it would be there in the index: ‘babies, B.B. eater of’. Things are used only inasmuch as they ...”

“... censorships, even within libertine literature. Smell hardly figures in the ‘liberating’ Lady Chatterley’s Lover (one coy reference to all men being ‘dogs that trot and sniff and copulate’ is all I can find), despite Lawrence’s avowed ‘hygienic’ aim to demolish his countrymen’s sexual inhibitions. I seemed to remember that Orwell’s ...”

“... Hellenic and Gallic sense, bien entendu, in the sole sense in which it exists for the admirers of Lady Windermere’s Fan and of The Importance of Being Earnest, etc. Presumably there was no point in appealing to James himself, since he called Wilde an ‘unclean beast’ and refused to sign a clemency petition. There were closer friends who shunned ...”

“... is a reference to his attending a suffragettes’ meeting in 1906: he does not say whether the lady who declared, ‘We have committed the crime of being born woman,’ was aware that the author of Tess was in the audience. In the late letters – Volume Seven prints those of Hardy’s last two years – there are some vivid glimpses of the distant ...”

“... life that I met Mr Campbell Johnston was one afternoon when I went to make certain proposals to a lady who became my wife. You can imagine that I did not welcome Mr Campbell Johnston’s presence and that I said the most wild and provocative things in order to drive him from the room. I well remember the feeling of desperation as I uttered one absurd and ...”

“... Japanese forms of the story, Callas’s performance in La Traviata in Mexico City in 1951, and The Lady of the Camellias by Dumas fils: all these are brought into relation with the tale of an ancient woman, Señora Consuelo, who entices a young scholar, Felipe, to live in her house on the pretext that he should edit her long-dead husband’s memoirs. In fact ...”

“... who soon started an affair with her principal man and allowed Max to slip gracefully away. The lady he eventually married, Florence Kahn, American and Jewish, was also an actress, with a solid kindly family home in Memphis. Shy and refined, she found her chosen profession agonisingly difficult, but was intense and moderately successful in the role of ...”