“... Lowell wrote the poem ‘Water’ about being on the coast of Maine in the summer of 1948 with Elizabeth Bishop; he put it first in his collection For the Union Dead, which he published in 1964. He sent Bishop a draft of the poem in March 1962, explaining that it was ‘more romantic and grey than the whole truth, for all has been sunny between us. Indeed ...”

“... to her affirming that other women are fatter than she is,’ Schwartz complained.He married Elizabeth Pollet, an aspiring novelist, in 1949. She was shy, which appealed to Schwartz. He said that her blonde hair and blue eyes reminded him of an ‘airline stewardess’. They had first met five years earlier and had had a brief affair that was scuppered ...”

“... resistance, and pressed the device of painful public execution into service as a powerful tool, as Elizabeth, mutatis mutandis, would do against Catholics from the 1570s onwards. Mary’s regime was well aware of the potential of such executions to alienate public opinion, and Pole and his colleagues took considered and on the whole effective steps to justify ...”

“... more positive line (think of Florence’s tender love for Paul Dombey). The tough-minded novelist Elizabeth Missing Sewell, a contemporary of Eliot, repeatedly warned women about renouncing autonomy in order to dedicate themselves to a brother’s welfare. Her youth had been dominated by the demands of her numerous and needy brothers, especially the ...”

“... At the heart of the book are accounts of the careers of four women who ‘ruled England before Elizabeth’. The first of them, Matilda, the daughter of King Henry I, fought for the throne against King Stephen, aspiring to make herself queen-regnant. The other three were all queen-consorts: Eleanor of Aquitaine, who rebelled against her husband, Henry ...”

“... in this shady tradition. In her preface, James apologises to Austen for ‘involving her beloved Elizabeth in the trauma of a murder investigation’, and imagines Austen replying tartly that ‘had she wished to dwell on such odious subjects, she would have written this story herself, and done it better.’ James risks it because of the affection she has ...”

“... son, and when young King Edward died in his teens, it left Edward’s half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, to succeed to the crown. Both had survived various indecisive marriage negotiations proposed by their father, and once liberated from much male interference as reigning monarchs, struck out in their own idiosyncratic directions. Mary defied the ...”

“... part of royal history. But while much is known about such women as the Duchess of Portsmouth, Elizabeth Villiers, Henrietta Howard and the Countess of Warwick, no serious attempt has yet been made to write that alternative version of royal history which their lives and loves collectively constitute. In any such account, the life and love of Dora Jordan ...”

“... fine and noble – admirable even – except perhaps in the case of Betjeman’s relationship with Elizabeth Cavendish, a woman with whom he shared much of his later life, and about whom Hillier tells us very little. Betjeman and Cavendish met in 1951 at a dinner party; he was 45 and she was 25. Cavendish was the daughter of the Duke of Devonshire, a cousin of ...”

“... the Barbara Cartlands of biography, romantics like Joan Haslip whose life of the famous fascinator Elizabeth of Austria, the last empress but one, was as spirited as its subject. Gordon Brook-Shepherd is not that kind of writer at all (nor was his empress that kind of empress). A former foreign correspondent and deputy editor of the Sunday Telegraph, he is a ...”

“... people who wouldn’t talk about his hero: these include Claire Bloom, Alexander Cohen, Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, Sir John Gielgud, Hugh Griffiths, Joseph Losey, James Mason, Vincente Minnelli, Mike Nichols, Rachel Roberts, Daphne Rye, Jean Simmons, and three of his wives, Sybil Christopher, Elizabeth Taylor and ...”

“... their own parishes and perhaps barely understood what they were dying for. An Essex servant girl, Elizabeth Folkes, aged 20, was asked what she understood about the nature of the Eucharist. Did she believe in a ‘substantial and real presence’ in the host? She answered: ‘It was a substantial lye, and a reall lye.’ She had been questioned once and let ...”

“... between three implacable women: Wallis, and the two queens. Mary and her daughter-in-law Elizabeth weren’t prepared to forgive the duchess, who in her turn could not forget, and would not let the duke forget, the snub of her lack of a royal title. Meanwhile in England the rest of the family set about adjusting to the new status quo. Like George III ...”

“... the struggles of power and principle he sees reflected in the plays Shakespeare wrote under Queen Elizabeth. The greater part of the book explores the plays about English history: the six King Henry plays and two King Richard plays, which relate the origins and course of the Wars of the Roses, and King John. But there are also extensive discussions of the ...”

“... the uncharted other district, is wittily related to the private appetitive geography of the house. Elizabeth Dalloway, in the Strand, looks up Fleet Street: ‘She walked just a little way towards St Paul’s, shyly, like someone penetrating on tiptoe, exploring a strange house by night with a candle, on edge lest the owner should suddenly fling wide his ...”