“... 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 ...”

“... to The Master Builder and When We Dead Awaken. Already, Ferguson has cast the characters of Lady from the Sea as Ibsen’s wife and sister-in-law, their father and mother, and a demon lover from the mother-in-law’s otherwise exemplary youth. Now, armed with the story of a young woman entering the home of an ageing creator and promising him a ...”

“... whom he laid himself open to the treason charges with which the servants of that most implacable lady, Queen Mary, turned him into a ‘dead Man’ weeks before his execution; and then his two sisters, of whom he chose the Protestant one. The idea of such a choice is a nice conceit, the more so because MacCulloch relates it to a dream which Cranmer is ...”

“... fleshed out with a cast of advertising copywriters’ characters, such as Eileen the dinner lady and Ben the media director – offer much promise of making a serious impression on that. Underlying all the changes that Blair and Mandelson are successfully propelling through the Labour Party is the imperative of ‘modernisation’: the conviction that ...”

“... whose emergent prince was Truman Capote. In Style, Style, Style, beside a drawing of a portly lady in a yellow dress and a pink umbrella and a green fan, it says: ‘Fashion wasn’t what you wore someplace anymore; it was the whole reason for going.’ And this was the first of Warhol’s very good perceptions: fashion is about event and situation and ...”

“... stylish Princess Michael of Kent’, Terence Conran, Jean Muir and the ‘energetic ... Lady Harlech’. But if Strong’s plan was to be governed by a group that was both more malleable and more protective than Whitehall had been, it went horribly wrong. Conran started off by talking of the collections as ‘the product’ and ‘inquired eagerly ...”

“... relation to her political powerlessness. It is unlikely that flowers will be strewn in the path of Lady Thatcher’s coffin, and she was certainly ‘destroyed’, but, unlike Diana, she wielded power and achieved what she wanted. It has been widely argued that Diana’s enormous popularity is a result (perhaps even a cause of) the ‘feminisation’ of our ...”

“... with whom he mingles after it; a large part of the value of the work is that it encompasses Lady Huntercombe’s dance, as well as the vissicitudes of the small magazine Fission, the aspirations of Mona Templer the would-be starlet, and the military dreams of Roland Gwatkin the bank employee. A glimpse at Hilary Spurling’s wonderful Invitation to the ...”

“... only when she dies, though ‘C’ and ‘D’ make it clear that she fully merited her title ‘Lady of the Mercians’). Alfred’s statesmanlike diplomacy is completely successful, except for one outburst of indignation from the ‘A’ chronicler which gives the game away. These queries make the Chronicle more interesting and potentially more valuable ...”

“... an inveterate biographer of Tory premiers – was asked to write this book by Eden’s widow, Lady Avon. One consequence is a decided reticence about Eden’s private life. Thorpe continually hints at his difficult temperament but seems not to want to say that Eden inherited his father’s passionate, even hysterical fits of temper. Similarly, we are told ...”