“... one of those sealed capsules by which future generations are supposed to know us. ‘Red China. Lady Docker. The Goon Show ... A-bomb.’ The story, hobbled by these overloud hints, ‘lurches back to the present’. That’s where it is told, that’s where the pain has to be understood. A splinter from the past is always flying towards an unsuspecting ...”

“... King Cole’, the Browning parody is perhaps the funniest: Who smoke-snorts toasts o’ My Lady Nicotine, Kicks stuffing out of Pussyfoot, bids his trio Stick up their Stradivarii (that’s the plural). But the Swinburne is the most loving – it is, indeed, beautiful:    In the time of old sin without sadness And golden with wastage of gold ...”

“... his dealings with his Pythia. On formal occasions, sometimes with irony, he addresses her as Young Lady; more privately he uses her original name, Arieka. These distinctions are important; Ionides is her savvy instructor but also, when she is in formal or prophetic mode, her servant. What is about to happen is a confrontation, not at all unusual in this ...”

“... school (Westminster), and he grew up thinking that he might work locally too, just like his dad. Lady Stansgate gives another insight on the boys’ upbringing: ‘They used to pretend they were workmen called Bill and Jim – Michael was Bill, Anthony Jim. Nurse Olive made them working clothes and they used to come and ask for jobs and I used to give them ...”

“... of the Chandler-scripted Blue Dahlia and two more Marlowe films – Robert Montgomery’s Lady in the Lake, and the Hawks/Faulkner/Bogart/Bacall Big Sleep – Chandler was rich and famous. Under the pressure of Hollywood social life and the Wilder collaboration (which Hiney calls Chandler’s first close human contact with anyone other than Cissy in a ...”

“... been allowed to put sterling into the system in October 1990 was a clear sign that the old lady was losing her political grip. It was an issue, therefore, on which Major had staked not only his economic judgment, but much emotional and political capital. Perhaps this explains why, though far from alone in endorsing ERM membership, he identified himself ...”

“... outside the American Embassy in London, thus disproving (as a pamphlet of the time pointed out) Lady Bracknell’s piercing words in The Importance of Being Earnest: ‘Fortunately, in England at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in ...”

“... be ruffled’. Diaries and magazine columns, especially E.M. Delafield’s Diary of a Provincial Lady, bear witness to the authority of this tremendous personage. ‘Last night I would have put my head in the gas oven,’ Ann Fleming wrote, ‘if I wasn’t too frightened of the cook to go into the kitchen.’Landemare​ was the crème de la crème. She ...”

“... for female artists seeking a way into the canon. It was only in the late 19th century that ‘lady’ students were admitted to life drawing classes at the Royal Academy, and even then the models had to be partially clothed. To exclude women from these classes was to deny them the possibility of painting ambitious works (Nochlin compared it to a medical ...”

“... or three degrees of separation from anyone he wanted to know. His first trip was made possible by Lady Norton, wife of the British ambassador to Greece, whom Craxton met at an exhibition opening in Zurich. On hearing that he wanted to go to Athens, she mentioned that she had left a ‘borrowed bomber’ in Milan after a trip to get new curtains for the ...”

“... and his biological father, Bobby Lipman (who killed a young woman while tripping); Ruth, Lady Fermoy; Major Ron Ferguson’s loyalty to the Wigmore Club (a massage parlour); the queen mother’s lodged fishbone; James Hewitt; Kate’s wife-attacking Uncle Gary; Beatrice and Eugenie and their fascinators; Charles’s ex, Whiplash Wallace; William’s ...”

“... learning’) and then her engagement with various progressive causes that turned her ‘from Tory lady to socialist firebrand’ – an evolution that, remarkably, seems not to have troubled her husband. Janet’s life sounds a new register, with an abortion and a first child out of wedlock followed by a brief companionate marriage, a second child and a ...”

“... She asked Sheena ‘when it first occurred to her that she could wind up as the nation’s first lady’; Sheena said she’d never thought about it before – ‘“Not until this very moment,” she says, blinking rapidly.’ The reporter didn’t believe her. Sheena joined Eric’s Mission for Missouri bus tour, usually holding their new ...”

“... every paper burnt, and every letter unanswered’. Allusions to James – primarily Portrait of a Lady – and other classic novelists structure the text, and Malcolm, an inveterate mythologiser, also compares Plath to Medea and Medusa; Hughes to Adonis and Prometheus; and Olwyn to Cerberus and the Sphinx. Fairy tales get in there too, especially ...”

“... of a Levantine grocer. In op-ed fable she presented the Windsor family’s lone human face, Avon Lady to the House of Atreus. This wasn’t so long ago, and the Royals’ supposed bounce back to public favour came as a shock to many in the commentariat. They need not have been surprised. Even in December 1997, at the supposed nadir of the Windsor clan’s ...”