“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... and had had nearly thirty of her poems published in literary journals or book collections, Elizabeth Bishop, then 28, admitted in a letter to Moore: ‘I scarcely know why I persist at all. It is really fantastic to place so much on the fact that I have written a half-dozen phrases that I can still bear to reread without too much ...”

“... only Bibles to do so were its Tudor ancestors which were given official status by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I: first the Great Bible of 1539, making the announcement on the title page of its 1541 edition, and then the fairly light revision of the Great Bible undertaken in the 1560s by the Elizabethan episcopate. This Bishops’ Bible took up the label of ...”

“... murderer of his wives, was continued by Somerset, the murderer of his brother, and completed by Elizabeth, the murderer of her guest. Sprung from brutal passion, nurtured by selfish policy, the Reformation in England displayed little of what had, in other countries, distinguished it – unflinching and unsparing devotion, boldness of speech, and singleness ...”

“... But the lure of political advancement was too great. As the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Elizabeth I’s second most important adviser, and the nephew of Lord Burghley, her chief counsellor, he had been born to the purple. But he was the youngest of five sons, and was still unprovided for financially when his father died suddenly in 1579, leaving the ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”