“... tiara by Cartier. Not particularly spectacular as Cartier tiaras go, it was once the property of Lady Marguerite Allan, who took it with her when she sailed from New York on 1 May 1915 on board the Lusitania. Six days later, off the Irish coast, a German U-boat torpedoed the ship, which sank in 18 minutes with the loss of 1198 lives. Among the survivors were ...”

“... performed by the actress Selma Vaz Dias. Vaz Dias had played the part of a lying passenger in The Lady Vanishes: ‘There has been no English ...”

“... was the late and much loved only child of ageing parents who doted on her. Sir Ralph and Lady Milbanke were justified in admiring their daughter’s intelligence and high spirits, if less sensible in giving in to them. In due course she was brought from the family home in County Durham to be launched in London. From Seaham Hall, a solid neoclassical ...”

“... of Starborough Castle, two of whose full-length, life-size effigies lay on the tomb chests in the Lady Chapel and a third, with his wife beside him, in the very centre of the chancel of the main body of the church. One effigy was engraved in brass, another was carved in stone and painted, while the couple in the chancel were carved out of alabaster. The ...”

“... by Heinkels. When Antony eyeballed her Coppertone tits and bum He was looking at Actium. Shake it, lady. Shake it for the Afrika Korps. Where the sea meets the desert there is always, There is always the ...”

“... the diary begins, and for the newcomer the first page establishes the milieu. ‘Had tea with dear Lady Throckmorton whose nephew Nicholas Throckmorton, Robert’s heir, called.’ Midi Gascoigne and Timmie Buxton, her sister, get a mention, as do Emerald Cunard and Denis Rickett. Logan Pearsall Smith, aged 80, starts to tell a story of an American cousin of ...”

“... world in these letters of 1875-1883 – the years, roughly, from The American to The Portrait of a Lady – is already the world of such great late works as The Awkward Age, The Ambassadors and The Wings of the Dove. They are the letters of a consciously cosmopolitan observer of European manners, but their decorum, even while he is being gathered to the bosom ...”

“... became the inspiration for the first canzone of his new style: a love poetry that would praise his lady.Love says of her, ‘How can a mortal creaturebe equally as pure as she is fair?’Beholding her again, he now declaresthat in her God intended something new.In the Divine Comedy, written nearly twenty years later, a poet in Purgatory recognises Dante as ...”

“... of them great ladies, as he was fond of pointing out; they were potential patrons and benefactors: Lady Ottoline Morrell, Lady Cynthia Asquith, the Honourable Dorothy Brett, Catherine Carswell, Mary Cannan, Amy Lowell and, later, Mabel (Dodge Sterne) Luhan. He accepted their money (Frieda was not above writing begging ...”

“... us her pubes and long shadow of thigh The fresh linen smelled for all the world What did the lady on TV call it? An orchard of some kind       ******* Sure it’s just like staring out the window, Johnny sure but with fly eyes and sidewise       ******* When Pappy and Mahoney left for dinner and a show I was soooo a-LONE there in the ...”

“... a miracle of discretion, because the artist himself emerges nowhere from the stone. A worshipping lady emerges in bas-relief, and is largely concealed behind a bush. One could do worse than to recommend a similar modesty to artists at large, wherever they may temporarily hide. Verlaine did not suffer from it. He scowls down at us from the top of the most ...”

“... sort I know in South London, with people of similar income and unpredictable bias. One nice old lady is quietly Tory; her neighbour is quietly Labour – ‘I’ve never met Mr O’Brien but I knew his parents and his grandparents ...’ Next is a young housewife: ‘Oh yes, I’ll have a poster. Railways, you know, British Rail.’ Next is an Echo ...”

“... one at the Embassy with a Rolls Royce and his presence was appreciated. A handsome woman named Lady Jardine introduced him to the pleasures of physical sex and he spent one day a week in London to see Tilly dancing. Her contract with C.B. Cochran paid her a thousand pounds a week: she had the star part in Coward’s Wake Up and Dream, and shared the ...”

“... and for that matter the English Gothic mode, which sets them apart from a production like Lady Sophia Sternheim. For all these stories are noticeably underpopulated – a single suffering consciousness takes up the whole canvas, sometimes accompanied by a second, the dear and true or dear and forbidden friend. Whereas Sophie von La Roche’s novel is ...”

“... bravura brushwork and stereotypically aristocratic feminine charm offered by the portraitist’s Lady Agnew, Hughes declares: ‘there is a perfect match between the decorous luxuriance of Lady Agnew’s pose, the creaminess of the paint, and the shadow of tension on her face. For that, one can forgive a lot of the routine ...”