“... In such poems as ‘A Song of the English’, ‘The Houses (A Song of the Dominions)’, ‘Our Lady of the Snows’, ‘The Native-Born’, and many others, one can see Kipling trying with a certain desperation to resolve the conflict between his enthusiasm for the world-straddling greatness of Britain, on the one hand, and, on the other, for everything ...”

“... that Joyce was treated ‘quite regally’. Margaret Joyce, too, began to broadcast, and Lord and Lady Haw-Haw moved into a swanky flat on Kastanien-Allee. Joyce remained the key presence in the Berlin Rundfunk even after Goebbels had begun to wonder, with the Soviet Union and the US having joined the war, whether Haw-Haw’s ‘biting criticism’ was the ...”

“... we knew Mr Benjamin to have been Jewish, we made no remark and left this declaration to his lady companion. She never said anything of the kind and let them take the body of the defunct. The refugees’ clothes were set out to dry, they retired for a brief rest, and well after dark in a pummelling thunderstorm they were taken to catch the night train ...”

“... principal of Hertford College, which was about to vote to admit women. At that point the ‘First Lady’ of Hertford fell silent on the subject, but when Johnson met her at the side of a cricket field and needled her, she told him that ‘no one could be against co-education when you see what lovely young girls we’ve got at Hertford.’ Warnock was also ...”

“... of reflecting or defining the national consciousness; work started very deliberately by Yeats and Lady Gregory when they founded the theatre in 1904. The argument about excellence – that women’s work just isn’t good enough – is incredibly hurtful given that there is so much mediocre work by men around. Theatre is a high-stakes medium. Some of the ...”

“... plenty of the South.The balcony is a favourite image of Rilke’s. In his work – as in ‘Lady on the Balcony’, written on 17 August 1907 – it usually implies aristocratic elevation. And yet ‘The Balcony’ gives the subject a Neapolitan twist: one can readily imagine generations wearing black. The balcony pulls the people together, seems to ...”

“... rather staid, old-fashioned concept. So Kraftwerk are a total work of art? Well, these days so are Lady Gaga, and Beyoncé, and Lana Del Rey, among many others.Kraftwerk​ sang the praises of a ‘continent without borders’, and Schütte’s devotion to them is indistinguishable from his feelings about the ‘wider political development of European ...”

“... for the print market. In 1819, Rose Emma Drummond showed a portrait of Hannah Thatcher, ‘a young lady born deaf and dumb’, as the catalogue entry explained gravely, ‘who was presented to Her late Majesty on acquiring the faculty of speech, and the sense of hearing’. Few subjects, Drummond must have known, could have been more perfectly calibrated for ...”

“... of a 17th-century English traveller, Luke Gernon, who explained that on a typical visit ‘the lady of the house meets you with her tray … salutations past, you shall be presented with all the drinkes in the house,’ and having ascended to the main chamber, which was located on the top floor where the walls were thinnest to allow maximum space, ‘you ...”

“... Sexual difference then rears its head, and La Bruyère’s absent-minded hero ‘pays a visit to a lady, and imagines that she is visiting him’, eventually inviting her to stay for supper.The apparent link between hospitality and patriarchy takes Derrida back to the story of Lot, as related in the book of Genesis. Lot is a stranger living in the city of ...”

“... certain things. He felt that to some extent she was playing a part, more court jester than crazy lady. She was always trying to embrace André and didn’t understand his resistance, but then no one had told her that she had been replaced in his life. During one meal by the pool, with André absent, she said that she knew what was the matter with him – he ...”

“... and smokey-voiced balladeers than towards disco, where I might come across the occasional young lady. Not long after my brother unburdened himself to me I wound up living with him for extended periods, setting up camp on the couch where we had smoked so many joints and eaten so many pistachio nuts. Of course, I was delighted by the arrangement. To my ...”

“... Baby.Abortion turns out to be lucky, too, for the lovers in Céline Sciamma’s film Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019). We are in pre-revolutionary France and Marianne, a Parisian artist, has been ferried to an island off the coast of Brittany to paint a portrait of Héloïse. It is to be sent to Italy, to the man Héloïse’s parents have picked out for her ...”

“... own, actual or merely mental, in the darkest of dark shades. Like the beautiful-to-raddled leading lady in some fantastical Ages of Woman (she died at an empress-like 81), Colette lived out virtually every sexual permutation known to woman with both gymnastic gusto and a sophisticated bon goût. There was the Plump and Horny Older Man, of course: the notorious ...”

“... with girls (Hardy presumably knew whether this was a true or false appearance); of a Venetian lady it says, ‘it is not known whether the Italian Contessa in A Group of Noble Dames was suggested by her’ (it must have been known by Hardy); and apropos his mood in 1870 it plays the detective: ‘a minute fact seems to suggest that Hardy was far from ...”