“... a less than wholeheartedly sensuous response. Certainly the idea of actually mounting the lovelorn lady is at first repellent to the Gulliver in him. He responds to her advances by citing Biblical interdictions against cross-breeding of all kinds, and human mating with beasts in particular. But she stumps him by asking whether he thinks of her as a beast, and ...”

“... Molina called for someone to come forward and make a few remarks. As a rule, some ‘little old lady’ (viejita) would approach the microphone and make a short speech. (The Monsignor had his viejitas too, whom we had seen leaving his Mass that same day, chattering away about the Sandinistas as if they were a rival neighbourhood clan.) The viejitas of ...”

“... great case, had no outstanding interrogation to his credit, and was conspicuously worsted by Lady Sackville in the contest over the will of Sir John Murray Scott. And, when his political prospects conflicted with his professional obligations, as in the Lever libel case, he put political prospects first. As a politician, his searing assaults on the ...”

“... almost always shown fully clothed. Whereas Eve is born in her birthday suit, Pandora, the first lady of the Greeks, comes with a full kit. Dress seems part and parcel of women’s identity. Athena springs out in full regalia and Aphrodite’s girdle seems to contain all her erotic power. To see a goddess naked therefore is an epiphany too far. The very ...”

“... White House has retaliated in its familiar two-prong style. Hillary has delivered thoughtful First Lady speeches, ruminating about the ‘irresponsible’ freedoms of Internet communications and the sad lack of ‘gateway-keepers’ – something must be done about all that paedophile porn and political slander. Meanwhile the White House Rottweilers have gone ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... the copper sheeting carries only its own weight. The copper sheeting is only 3/32 in. thick. The lady is practically transparent. Weight for weight and height for height, she has a skin like Meryl Streep ... Like a dolphin adapting its epidermis to the speed of the passing sea, she ripples and flexes in the wind, redistributing the air pressure so that it ...”

“... had written à propos ‘The clouds that are so light’: Oh, you needn’t think of another lady. There would have to be 2 to make a love affair and I am only one. Nobody but you would ever be likely to respond as I wished. I don’t like to think anybody but I could respond to you. If you turned to anybody else I should come to an end immediately. The ...”

“... clearly what many men saw later, Dante in, inter alia, the Donation of Constantine, Langland in Lady Meed, until too many men saw it and Europe was overturned. Grosseteste would not have approved of Wycliffe, but Wycliffe was right in claiming him as his predecessor. Southern’s ideal reader would perhaps be Grosseteste himself, if it is fair to ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... an open line.Although, at the outset, Ross announced that the New Yorker was not meant for the old lady from Dubuque, he always made sure that out-of-towners could read it without pain. It was, he’d say, a family magazine. According to Brendan Gill – a hostile judge – Ross’s morality was shaped by ‘the ugly commonplaces of almost a hundred years ...”