“... desire was not to be any kind of a celebrity. But the quiet suburb was not altogether safe. Lady Ottoline Morrell called, with the best intentions. Charlotte hid. Lady Ottoline left flowers and a message with the housekeeper. Charlotte wrote that she could only go to London by appointment. ...”

“... thought up an escape plan, and decided who would carry it out. The prince, dressed as Flora’s lady’s maid, would be shipped across the Minch to Skye, where he and Flora’s mother could shelter them. Did he consult Flora about his scheme, or give her a chance to back out? Apparently not. Like everyone around her, she knew that the prince was on the ...”

“... advice-givers had moved on to new fields; for example, offering a tip or two to a young lady newly ravaged by smallpox on how to hold on to her lover, with complementary advice to a gallant robbed of an eye and a leg in battle on how to retain his mistress’s affection. John Debrett’s flagship was the Peerage, which rode the generations like HMS ...”

“... and humour, and spreads inter-racial and inter-class tolerance. Her best friend is a school dinner lady married to a washing-machine repairman. The trouble is that it is difficult to emphasise the admirable nature of Lyris’s attitude without making her sound patronising. The rest of the cast is divided into goodies, baddies and what you might call lost ...”

“... here.’ Of course we understand her metaphorically, even if we wouldn’t put it past the bag-lady character she plays at various moments in this work to set up house inside some forgotten foyer. At one point she films a protest march, many young people carrying signs urgently calling out for change. Varda herself suddenly appears on the sidelines, a ...”

“... of high society romance that Kate Nickleby is obliged to read to the languid Mrs Witterly mentions Lady Flabella’s ‘mouchoir of finest cambric, edged with richest lace, and emblazoned at the four corners with the Flabella crest’, the ‘golden salver’ on which she receives a billet-doux and the ‘silken damask, the hue of Italy’s ...”

“... nor do I roll up my sleeves and just get on with it like a plucky little householder, mother and lady novelist probably ought to. Instead, I pack my laptop into its snappy black case, leave housekeeping money on the kitchen table, give what I hope is an affirmative hug to the daughter, commend her well-being to her father, and bugger off for a fortnight to a ...”

“... to Khartoum, and thence God only knows where, in search of the sources of the Nile.’ The future Lady Baker’s first home in Africa was a thatch and wood hut on the banks of the Atbara, where Florence laid out a piece of chintz and placed on it her brushes, her scent and a mirror. It is at this point that the extraordinariness of this little-known story ...”

“... beings came back into circulation. At the same time it produced the smooth, sleek silhouette of a lady, at once reinforcing existing ideas of class (women were visibly either ladies or not) and undermining them. The corset market itself was minutely graded, from expensive models adorned with rich laces and ribbons for the well-off, to plain ones made of stout ...”

“... I am. (Pause) MR MORTIMER: Alone today? MISS PLUNKETT: I beg your pardon? MR MORTIMER: No ‘boss lady’? MISS PLUNKETT: Lying down. We had a walk on to the clock tower. She overdid it. She often overdoes it. Are you two acquainted? MR MORTIMER: One nods. We smile. A fellow guest. She is a handsome woman. MISS PLUNKETT: Yes. ‘Very good for her age’ is a ...”

“... Birds sang in their own Sweet language, and the world was joyful. And the son of the widowed lady Living alone in the Barren Forest rose, and quickly Saddled his hunting horse . . . In these lines we are introduced to the hero of Chrétien de Troyes’s last romance, written late in the 12th century. He is a youth brought up in the forest, without any ...”

“... body. Rowse had come upon Forman in the investigation of his candidate for Shakespeare’s Dark Lady, a promising one if such a person is required: the Court musician Emilia Bassano, Emilia Lanier once married, who consulted him as to whether her husband would get a knighthood and she become a real lady. She did ...”

“... pen’ (Sonnet 78), Torquato Tasso. Candidates for the doubtful honour of being the Dark Lady are discussed (so far as the list went in 1970) and a slight preference is registered for Mary Fitton, who had a good run for many years but, when investigated, turned out to have a fair complexion, her hair merely brown. But there is no definite ...”

“... still wearing the long duster coats she had worn in 1920 and Queen Mary looked like an Edwardian lady all her life: dying in the Fifties, she still dressed as she had in 1910. Look at Ford Madox Brown’s Work: only the middle and upper classes are dressed in a contemporary way; the workmen, the flower-seller and the poorer characters are dressed in what ...”

“... Fixed in the mind, they burn For things to be in peace. Invocation Unanswering voice, Sustainer, Lady or Lord: I have no choice But to attend Your silent word. I think again Of the first poet Of our tongue: Abandoning The sweet, profane Intoxication Of plucked string And exploit sung. At your command He sang creation. He had withdrawn To where His silence ...”