“... that was totally relaxed about people who become filthy rich; they are now Sir Harold Evans and Lady Evans CBE. Even in his eighties, Harry hankers after public life, although his recent interventions have not been happy, including his latest effusion in the Guardian, in which he insisted that ‘Israel is not an “occupying power” in Gaza,’ even if ...”

“... Franklin in 1848; the hunt for him, thanks in no small part to the tireless lobbying of his widow, Lady Jane, soon came to supplant the search for the northwest passage as the primary purpose of voyages to the Arctic. Lambert argues, fairly convincingly, that by the time of Franklin’s voyage the search for the passage was itself a crowd-pleasing pretext, and ...”

“... H.G. Wells, Sidney and Beatrice Webb), trade-unionists, bankers and that uncategorisable original, Lady Astor. ‘An ambassador without excellent personal contacts is not worthy of the name,’ Maisky wrote to Fedor Gusev, one of the ‘new men’ who came into the Soviet diplomatic service after the Great Purges. It was important not only to know people but ...”

“... served it with her own hands. While the hot water was hauled up from the kitchen by a servant, the lady of the house opened up the locked tea caddy with a key kept on her chatelaine ring; she put the leaves into the fashionably decorated porcelain or precious silver teapot; and she decanted the brewed tea into her guests’ (originally handle-less) porcelain ...”

“... and, let’s face it, I wasn’t knitting socks for our boys at the front. Wherever that was. The lady chaplain came round, but I said she’d do better praying for God himself; he had after all, caused all the trouble. One crap in the world and it was time to clear up the fucking mess he’d made of it. We were at least owed an apology. Mostly I wrote ...”

“... by the way,’ they say, ‘if you want to try some trick, don’t try that Smith trick. Because lady, you are deeply unconvincing.’I start gathering my things together. The un-bags. My coat. The rodent says: ‘Given up then? Younger generation. No stamina!’ He’s jeering at me. ‘Here.’ He holds out the raggedy newspaper. ‘Take your quick ...”

“... it was easy enough for Manning to take in a CD with a scrawled inscription in felt tip – ‘Lady Gaga’ did the trick – wipe the contents and ‘then write a compressed split file … nobody suspected a thing.’ A former FOB Hammer security staffer explained how easy it could be: ‘There were laptops sitting there with passwords on sticky notes. If ...”

“... the mines, including those from which the Loshes’ wealth in part derived, were dug. Disraeli’s Lady Constance in Tancred was perhaps more typical than the intellectually gifted Losh in forming the general impression that ‘first there was nothing, then there was something; then, I forget the next, I think there were shells, then fishes; then we came ...”

“... that 40,000 dogs were caught and killed in London in 1665 alone, and Fletcher’s The Scornful Lady (c.1609) offers a rare protest against this practice (‘I would ’twere lawfull in the next great sickness to have the dogs spared, those harmless creatures’). But what else were civic authorities, charged with protecting the populace, to do, since they ...”

“... Llangorse Lake. Why? To protect himself from Vikings? It was Alfred’s daughter Æthelflæd, ‘Lady of the Mercians’, who eventually conquered Llangorse, but the kingdom of Brecon itself probably fell victim to the kings of neighbouring Gwynedd. English and Welsh rulers used Viking chaos to pick off their competitors. Fleming does full justice to the ...”

“... might talk to his good Lord Such and Such, who might get you a moment with the even more elevated Lady Herself, who might if you were lucky be a gentlewoman of the queen’s bedchamber, and who might see about your petition for the reversion of an office or talk to the master of the wards about that tasty estate down the road you had your eye on. Ralegh was ...”

“... their consequences. He did not have to fight for his own interests – his waspish sister-in-law Lady Frances Balfour said: ‘Arthur’s opportunities were all made for him’ – and he found it hard to imagine that those less fortunate would fight for theirs. He told his sister Evelyn Rayleigh that ‘his mind did not naturally turn to politics. He never ...”

“... Fanny’s triumphant debut temporarily rescued the family fortunes. Accompanied by her mother as Lady Capulet and her father as Mercutio, Fanny’s Juliet was an overwhelming, if not quite universal success. But most critics agreed that her performance was more than worthy of her name; and in her first season alone she managed to earn almost triple what her ...”

“... of defence staff, Sir Peter Harding, was having an affair with the very nearly perfectly named Lady Bienvenida Buck. Even amid his rejoicing at the 80,000 extra copies he sold and feeling like ‘I’ve won an Olympic gold medal for gutter journalism or something – utterly, deliciously intoxicating,’ he spares a thought for his victims: ‘I must admit ...”

“... of a tank; that he was suspected of treachery as a result of a letter he received from a lady while he was at Delft – but these details are usually subordinated to, and for most modern readers awkwardly combined with, attempts to allegorise or moralise them. Gascoigne’s account of his experiences in Holland in ‘Dulce Bellum Inexpertis’ is ...”