“... 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 ...”

“... runs from Morgann to Bradley and was exploded by L.C. Knights in “How many children had Lady Macbeth?”’ Knights exploded nothing: he joined the new vogue for formalising and depersonalising Shakespeare’s world, and giving it a spatial and symbolic dimension instead of a predominantly human one. In a sense, the reason was plain. Freudian ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... will be fundamentally at odds with such an approach. Marcia Pointon is good on the portraits of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in Turkish dress. Hers was an experience oddly complementary to Haydon’s: but what she found was salvation rather than martyrdom through self-mythologising in art. She was a woman for whom some form of public representation was ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Camilla Parker-Bowles. (We are not told if this is a sexual relationship, but no doubt the lady gives good-enough Jung and Van der Post to satisfy the seeking Prince.) All this, according to Morton, has made Diana increasingly her own woman. With the help of astrologers and metaphysically-inclined masseurs she is carving a niche for herself in ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... There were occasional moments in Elegies when something went wrong. The line ‘How well my lady used her knife and fork!’ was awkward because too Literary. And Dunn in Northlight celebrating his ‘Moonpuddled water, mystic Firth’ again treads dangerously close to Higher Things. I admire this book for its scope, which reaches to Australia and ...”

“... he was writing Peter Grimes. In 1936, after hearing a concert performance of Shostakovich’s The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, he wrote in his diary that he would ‘defend it through thick & thin against these charges of “lack of style” ... It is the composer’s heritage to take what he wants from where he wants – & to write music ... The “eminent ...”

“... the nationalist tiger by expropriating Anglo-Iranian. (Its remaining employees, the vicar and the lady who ran the guest-house in Abadan – three days before, she’d attacked an Iranian officer with an umbrella – gathered in front of the Gymkhana Club on 4 October for HMS Mauritius to take them to Basra. The ship’s band sailed away playing ‘Colonel ...”

“... where he stayed with a comfy German family, conceiving a considerable admiration for the lady of the house (‘too fine for her surroundings’), though not for the gentleman, and then to Jena, ostensibly to follow philosophy lectures at the university, but devoting more attention to the poets, including Rilke and Hölderlin: ‘Their language is ...”

“... behind the last row of chairs. Now, at least I was visible. At a desk on a platform sat a young lady with a telephone permanently at her ear. From the main saleroom below was transmitted the conduct of the auction. Evidently, the auctioneer announced the lots and took bids from below; the telephonist took the bids from above – and the bids were ...”

“... is in sharp contrast to Mr Anderson’s account, in which he says more than once that if only the lady had chosen Tristan Garel Jones (did I hear someone say ‘Who?’) as her Chief Whip last year instead of Tim Renton, and had had someone a bit less laid-back than Peter Morrison (‘who?’ again) as her Parliamentary Private Secretary, then she would still ...”