“... movie still of Greta Garbo in The Kiss. The major turning-point is Romney’s ‘Portrait of Lady Hamilton as Circe’. His sexual infatuation with his model is so intense and palpable as to define a tradition that continues unbroken down to the latest Playboy centrefold: the loosened hair, the eyes set in a lustful stare, the half-open rosebud ...”

“... Russell in his autobiography gives no casus belli, but there was disharmony from the start between Lady Russell and Barnes, who liked to instruct her on how to bring up her three-year-old child. The unforeseeable tipping point turned out to be her habit of knitting (for the allied troops) during her husband’s lectures. She received an official reprimand from ...”

“... of pain about the postwar decline of ‘civilisation’ in a country where ‘the more one’s a lady or a gentleman the less chance one has.’Both radical hopes and reactionary fears were confounded by events, and the differences between Labour and Tory were often narrower than they seemed at the time. The Attlee government created the NHS, but Churchill ...”

“... set during the First World War, the other a comedy thriller in the manner of Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes. But both are elevated by the light, ironic style of Pressburger’s script and by the hulking presence of Conrad Veidt, another exile from the Nazis, who had appeared in German silent movies. (Veidt wasn’t Jewish but, as Caitlin McDonald writes ...”

“... to his daughter Mary) and possessed to his dying day the skin and cherubic shape of a Rubens lady – as did Mao Tse-tung. General Richardson’s concern with homosexuality stems from a passionate desire to lessen the guilt and unhappiness which have traditionally accompanied the sublimation of homosexual instincts. This aspect of his book strikes me as ...”

“... she did or did not want to do. She wanted to abolish poverty: but she did not want to play the Lady Bountiful distributing charity, nor was she willing to adopt the harsh distinction that the Charity Organisation Society drew between the deserving and the undeserving poor. She was profoundly convinced that poverty and miserable social conditions were the ...”

“... 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 ...”