“... Pritchett murmured of Murdoch’s wearing a shabby mackintosh throughout one evening. There was Brigid Brophy and her girlfriend, and, somehow, her husband too, who was grand and titled but looked pleased to be invited. Journalists showed up, of course. That was also the point, a reward in advance for a little ink. They were greedy in their ...”

“... a 21-year-old woman who had had 789 lovers. ‘Prince Philip, Mary Whitehouse, Lord Hailsham and Brigid Brophy were all quoted on what they thought about the subject.’ The only sex-related subject not permitted in the paper was homosexuality. Murdoch was against it: ‘Do you really think the readers are interested in poofters?’ The Pacesetters ...”

“... that ‘Mr Waugh’s reputation among the critics has hardly yet recovered from the blow.’ Brigid Brophy had the best joke: ‘In literary calendars, 1945 is marked as the year Waugh ended.’But maybe Dr Stopp was on to something when he implied that the two Waughs are really dual aspects of a single cast of mind. No doubt one side of his ...”

“... matter? (‘Of course, Terry, the perfect Queen of the Night.’) Did I think Iris Murdoch and Brigid Brophy had had an affair? What was Adrienne Rich’s girlfriend like? When was somebody ever going to spill the beans on Eudora Welty and Elizabeth Bowen?Was there some way, I wonder now, that she wanted me to absolve her? Was the fact that she never ...”

“... of Tambimuttu’s Editions Poetry London. When it was reissued in the Sixties, however, Brigid Brophy’s foreword acclaiming it as one of the world’s half-dozen masterpieces of poetic prose led a chorus of praise for a work perfectly in tune with the idealistic romantic nihilism of the decade. The freedom of language heralded by the ...”

“... one, and refers to Antigone, who (as he read her) suffered for others. In Mozart the Dramatist, Brigid Brophy describes opera as the exploitation of female pain, and Mozart, too, finds women his best vehicle for grief. It is true that Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni embodies other-related attachment and its pain, but although he has some lovely songs they ...”