“... Bulawayo’s writing, is more often likened to defecation. ‘If you have any ears,’ the First Lady of Jidada warns her subjects, ‘you’ll heed my advice because what you’re doing is swallowing all manner of big rocks, and very soon it shall be seen just how wide your asshole is when those very rocks will need to be shat!’ In Bulawayo’s debut ...”

“... For the sum of just ‘four bundles’ – a bundle is $10,000 – he could arrange for one of his lady friends in Malmö to marry me. (‘We have to pay her a bundle in advance.’) There would be a wedding in Baghdad, with pictures. ‘Then once you get your visa, arranged through a contact at the Swedish embassy in a neighbouring country, you pay us another ...”

“... McCann remembers that about a week after Ranger Best was shot I argued on a street corner with a lady who had been vigorously supporting the ‘peace campaign’, in the course of which I alleged against her that, ‘I suppose if you knew who did it you would give the names to the police.’ At this she stalked away saying that she had been trying to conduct ...”

“... and don’t bend themselves up at each end as common seals do. ‘Like black bananas,’ the B&B lady had said on Berneray, the night before we sailed. A stone caught my eye, and I bent to pick it up. It was a perfect sphere of white quartz that fitted the palm of my hand, an orb. I’ll keep that, I thought, and, in the moment it had taken me to admire it ...”

“... of Churchill’s inner circle, Action This Day, which in her first edition (but not the second) Lady Soames said was written at Clementine’s express wish. The first third of Moran’s book has now been reprinted as Churchill at War, 1940-45, with some additional material from his papers and a new introduction by his son John. As his son ...”

“... Fencibles (for whom he collected and sometimes wrote such songs as ‘Nine Inch Will Please a Lady’), he laid the foundations of his own cult. So ridiculed and loathed by 20th-century Scottish intellectuals, Burns suppers are not a betrayal of the bard, but merely a damagingly partial continuation of his legacy. The prominence of Burns among icons of ...”

“... going to live with a perfect stranger while receiving letters from my former chums, inmates of the Lady Chichester Hospital, cheering my good fortune and wondering how I was getting on in my new life. I was getting on as anyone of my age might, given my previous circumstances and the fact that I had been taken on, sight unseen, for I didn’t know how long, as ...”

“... to get rid of that woman who’s doin’ a Negress. My mother ain’t a Negress. My mother’s a lady.’ But Dowling held fast and Taylor, so drunk she couldn’t stand ninety minutes before the curtain went up on opening night, managed to pull herself together, got rapturous notices for her performance, made Williams rich and presented him with the ...”

“... educate young men. And so it went on. When Parliament gave women the right to stand for election, Lady Sandhurst was unseated from the London County Council by an opponent who claimed that, not being a person, she could not be ‘a fit person of full age’. But when a Miss Cobden was elected and waited till the time for challenge was past before taking her ...”

“... made a comment at the time. Adam, old chap, we all get carried away when there’s a lovely lady on the screen – can’t fault your taste, my boy, she’s the most delightful creature – but next time be a bit more discreet, eh? You might give your mother a turn. An unthinkable scenario. Of course he wasn’t asking me to believe anything of the ...”

“... Stories rely on mystery. Who killed the old lady? We don’t know, so we read on to find out. Perhaps we do know, so we read on to see if the killer will be caught. It may be that we know the culprit’s identity, and know they’ll be caught, but we read on to find out how, and why they did it. Or perhaps we know all these things, but, having been introduced to a set of characters, we stay to get to know them better; and, having got to know them, we stay longer, because it is a mystery how they are going to deal with the problems we now know they have ...”

“... Senate on various issues (as she was before her run for president). Abused in the role of first lady, she had come to be respected by the press as a lawmaker. Her low profile in the cabinet has been a surprise. But Obama’s extraordinary insistence on placing himself at centre stage has kept out all contenders. We are learning now, from such sources as Bob ...”

“... hands were filthy and his trousers caked in mud and diesel. The flat had once belonged to an old lady. Traces of a domestic life that had long ceased to exist were scattered around the room and mingled with the possessions of the new occupiers. A mother of pearl ashtray sat next to a pile of walkie-talkies. Small china figurines stood on top of the TV next ...”

“... spotlights, and the geometrically scored skate-marks disappear, he goes off and screws the leading lady the director covets. It’s a brilliantly comic moment – and one that (again) replays, or becomes a snapshot, en abîme, of the complex cultural legacy Toussaint has inherited, and its relation to a dumb mainstream culture in a corner of whose soil it must ...”

“... of Ambiguity, and was wondering what to write next. Urged by Jean Genet, she went to see the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, on show for the first time after the war. Citizen Kane was also being shown in Paris for the first time, and Beauvoir was impressed: Orson Welles had revolutionised cinema. Politics was not an all-encompassing consideration, for ...”