“... has a special destiny waiting for her. The title, and epigraph, link her with that superior young lady, Alice. Stella’s favourite reading is Grimm, from which we are presumably intended to infer that she is an ugly duckling. But just how the metamorphosis will happen is left obscure. The novel ends with her returning to Skelf with the ever-pregnant ...”

“... elaborate conversational manoeuvre designed to trick Lord Raw-don, an aristocratic kinsman of the lady, into acknowledging a family connection with her. He was very pleased with his ‘great address’ and the fact that it ‘had a fine effect’ when he told her about it. A day or two later, however, he was less successful, ‘raving’ about M.C. to a Mrs ...”

“... his 18th birthday, for example, he records a discussion about capital punishment with the aunt (Lady Mary Agatha Russell) who had in his childhood taught him English history – from a Russellian viewpoint, of course. Of course Auntie thinks, as women almost always do, principally, of the effect of punishment on the man after committing the crime, rather ...”

“... spree on the tables at Baden seems to have been prompted by reluctance to go on to meet his lady friend in Paris. This was Apollinaria Suslova, usually cast by biographers as the Dostoevskian ‘infernal woman’ premier grade, model for his diabolical heroines and source of many of his woes. In Frank’s presentation she becomes a rather ordinary ...”

“... printed archive, I was transfixed by these words in the Island Guide to Mingulay: ‘in order that Lady Gordon Cathcart could let the islands of Pabbay, Berneray and Mingulay to a grazing tenant, by her authority “notice has been served on the people on these Islands that they are to leave, and their stock if not cleared off will be seized” ... It is said ...”

“... for example, Bate is sidetracked into an unhelpful fantasy about the true identity of the Dark Lady of the Sonnets (poems which Bate also discussed in a deeply unconvincing Sunday Telegraph article headlined ‘Shakespeare Was Straight’), attempting to convict the poet Samuel Daniel’s sister of multiple adultery on circumstantial evidence that ...”

“... Greenmantle Hannay, in his early forties, admits that he has ‘never been in a motor car with a lady before’. ‘I am glad you think I am better at love-making,’ Buchan wrote in a letter to Gilbert Murray. ‘I hate the stuff. I sit and blush with disgust when I am writing it.’ So flirtation and sexual tension were largely off the table as a means of ...”

“... the UK’s newish Supreme Court might develop into anything resembling the US Supreme Court. After Lady Hale’s disembowelling of Johnson’s illegitimate attempt to prorogue Parliament, they yearn for the days when the lord chancellor really did embody the law and did pretty much what his cabinet colleagues asked him to; a clubbable chap like Michael Havers ...”

“... and one on death row; years spent living in motels where she would sneak in posing as a cleaning lady; bursitis and peripheral neuropathy induced by the numbing agent lidocaine. She was his protector and procurer. He funded the party, which was mostly the pair of them sitting on the couch, watching television and smoking. He was still travelling for business ...”

“... duties’ in breeding child after child. In fact, George came to love Charlotte dearly, and her lady in waiting, Fanny Burney, testified to how lovable she was. Unusually, the king and queen slept in the same bed until they were separated by his madness. Even then, he told Burney, ‘The queen is my physician, and no man can have a better; she is my ...”

“... Castillo Armas and a votive candle at his feet. There are also photos of Trujillo and of the lady of the house with two generations of the Bush family: the two ex-presidents and Jeb, who was governor of Florida, hugging her. There is also a photo of her with Ronald Reagan.Vargas Llosa​ launched the Spanish-language edition of Harsh Times on 3 December ...”

“... degree of choice for most aspiring politicians. He was a member of an unfashionable college – Lady Margaret Hall – rather than one of the prestigious old foundations like Balliol or Christ Church, but through sheer ability and a good deal of networking, including the assiduous cultivation of Johnson, he managed to become president of the Oxford ...”

“... for her to form a hunting party, or rush out and scalp me; though I know she’s a small poor lady, with a piping voice and a bird’s neck. Till someone explains why it’s wrong, I’m sticking by my joke. I know it’s ridiculous, but it’s the only joke I’ve got. I know everything about denominations: church, chapel, various chapels, Protestant ...”

“... in the sensations of young, vulnerable women wandering alone in the gloom. In The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James sends Isabel Archer boldly marching by herself through the ‘thick brown air’ from Euston to Piccadilly. Corton, however, suggests that the fog is ‘a metaphorical representation of this lack of light in her life, the obscurity of her ...”

“... Gonzago’s wife has vowed that if her husband dies she will never remarry, with the words ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks,’ she is ‘nonplussed, and shows no sign of recognising the likeness of herself in the Player Queen’. I have never yet seen a Gertrude this stupid in performance; more often her reply is played as a defiant ...”