“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... a genially tolerant figure and a strong Europhile, has some surprising supporters, including Lady Olga Maitland. Portillo, for his part, has significant support on the Left of the Party. Tony Blair and Charles Kennedy would no doubt prefer Portillo, and at the moment, the Euro remains a real obstacle to Clarke’s leadership, unless the Party can ...”

“... of Abydos, Lara, and the rest of the Eastern tales that followed. The lionisation, the affair with Lady Caroline Lamb that succeeded it, and the affair with his half-sister which succeeded that, the marriage, the separation, the exile: all depend to an incalculable extent on the success of Childe Harold. Most of what we do know about the way the manuscript ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... I emptied all the materials from the car, I could fit in three people. MDM would have the pregnant lady, but it seemed unlikely that the other two cars would drive back into a bombardment to collect us. I said, more reassuringly than I felt, that it would be better if we all stayed inside for the moment, and that I did have some food and blankets. A ...”

“... education. So she started writing about the law instead, in pieces about the Stephen Ward and Lady Chatterley trials for Esquire, Jack Ruby for Life, the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial for the Saturday Evening Post. ‘The law, the workings of the law, the daily application of the law to people and situations, is an essential element in a country’s ...”

“... hesitate to contact major figures in the literary world: Ibsen, George Russell, W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory among others. But even as he made these contacts the young man courted rejection; a long letter to Ibsen on his 73rd birthday closes with the idea that the great playwright had ‘only opened the way’ and that ‘higher and holier enlightenment ...”

“... people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.’ ‘Goodnight,’ I said to the lady of the cups, and she smiled and nodded at the buzz outside. ‘You never know,’ she ...”

“... dependent I am on you. Cimmie: Went to lunch at Maryland today, found Princess Louise, Lady Londesburgh, Jack Wilson ... I tried desperately hard to be friendly and gay. It was the fashion in the Mosleys’ circle for husbands to try to get off with other people’s wives: this was another of the ‘rules of the game’ to which Nicholas ...”

“... like some imbibed jelly, a primitive life-form that will bud inside you. You throw tantrums in fat-lady shops, where the stock is grimy tat tacked together from cheap man-made fabric, a choice of electric blue or cerise. You can’t get your legs into boots, or your feet into last year’s shoes. You say, okay, then I’ll be fat. As it seems you have no ...”