“... keepsake, nothing more. You’ve changed the ‘loan perpetual’ to a bequest by dying. Augusta, Lady Blanche, Lord Ravenstone – I’ve read the lot, trying to gel to sleep. The jokes have all gone flat. I can’t stop ...”

“... possible, was not as great a choke-pear for women writers as the attitudes of ‘Epistle to a Lady’. Swift proved friendlier to women than Pope. He was of practical assistance to individual women writers – specifically, Irish women such as Mary Barber and Constantia Grierson. More important, Swift’s abjuration of the grand line in favour of the ...”

“... half a century before the social purity trend was reversed, after the Wolfenden Report and the Lady Chatterly trial. Soon afterwards came the Beardsley revival, gathering momentum with the retrospective exhibition organised in London in 1966 by Brian Reade. The Nineties had gone underground for seventy years, resurfacing only when the hold of Late ...”

“... by the recurring sound of trumpets, piano blues, faint polka music, and the chilling cry of the lady selling flowers for the dead. He likened his symbolist fantasy Camino Real to ‘riding out’ on a tenor sax in a bop session. Williams’s literary heroes were Rilke, D.H. Lawrence, and Hart Crane, and his theatrical heroes were Ibsen, Strindberg and ...”

“... as enthusiastically as I would Madame de la Tour du Pin’s Mémoires, venturing to add that Lady Fraser was probably a far nicer lady than the French-Irish (born a Dillon) survivor of the political changes in France from Louis IV through the Revolution, the Terror and Napoleon to Louis XVIII. The prolific Sir Hugh has ...”

“... George IV had many unattractive traits, but harshness was not one of them. He told the second Lady Liverpool that there should be no talk of resignation till absolutely necessary and hoped the Prime Minister would soon be well enough to resume work. ‘No, no, not I – too weak, too weak.’ And he became again unconscious, reviving only to put his hand ...”

“... book carry with it the occupational hazards of seeing his plays, such as finding the redoubtable Lady Redgrave looming over one ready to box one’s ears, as she did to a vociferous member of the audience of A Sense of Detachment. The book as a form is safe, even cosy, and I suspect that critics, who have given Osborne such a consistently hard time for so ...”

“... to it). Female outlaws who attempt to usurp the masculine principle – Queen Margaret, Joan, Lady Macbeth, Goneril and Regan – are condemned as fiends and witches and the term applied to them is ‘unnatural’. By trying to become male, they also inevitably demonstrate the worst aspects of feminine outlawry: they become lustful and promiscuous, guilty ...”

“... his works ‘to those who know nothing of either’, except – in his view, unfortunately – for Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It is fair to say he succeeds in this aim; he gets in a reasonable amount of biographical detail, in spite of the poverty of his list of sources, which includes neither Nehls’s ‘Composite Biography’ nor Moore’s variously ...”

“... grotesques. There is abundant evidence, too, that she spoke as she wrote: one aristocratic lady noted that Emma’s pronunciation was ‘very vulgar’; an earl more charitably referred to her accent as ‘Dorick’ or rustic; another observer detected the ‘Lancashire’ in her voice even during her great days in Italy. (Not much use, it ...”

“... family in A Good Man Is Hard to Find, she narrates the scene with gleeful wit:‘Jesus,’ the old lady cried. ‘You’ve got good blood! I know you wouldn’t shoot a lady. I know you come from nice people! Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady. I’ll give you all the money I’ve ...”

“... interest groups, her hymn of praise seems embarrassingly obsequious. In accordance with it, Lady Thatcher adopts the full American line on Iraq and the Middle East. She even calls Israel ‘our ally’, although Israel is America’s ally but not Britain’s. Syria is deemed ‘obdurate’ for insisting on regaining all her territory that Israel has ...”

“... who are fated to hear it. The best of Lee’s stories, however, is ‘Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady’, in which a young boy’s fairy godmother, Oriana, has been condemned to take the form of a grass snake until she can find a lover trusting enough to kiss her fangs. She is hacked to pieces by the lackeys of Alberic’s jealous uncle and Alberic dies of ...”

“... amount about Caroline and her behaviour, did not. It seems that George’s current mistress, Lady Jersey, had some say in the matter, and the news that the prospective bride was neither especially good-looking nor refined did not apparently displease her at all. From the beginning there were at least three people in this marriage, and at times as many as ...”

“... he gets down to business, so that within a scene the play is at full gallop. No messing about with Lady M. either. No sooner does she learn Duncan is going to visit than she decides on the murder. Oddities are Macduff’s abandonment of wife and family in order, seemingly, to save his own skin, though the scene in which his wife is discussing this with Ross is ...”