“... Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in August 1900, the youngest daughter and ninth of ten children of Lord and Lady Glamis. When she was four her father inherited the earldom of Strathmore and she became Lady Elizabeth. The Strathmores had houses in London and Hertfordshire as well as Glamis, the Scottish estate granted to an ...”

“... He showed an early talent for art, and was sent to the Slade through the benevolence of a local Lady Bountiful. He emerged from it in 1912, an almost dwarfish figure a couple of inches over five feet and weighing less than seven stone, already aspiring to the religious past and intent to identify it in terms of Cookham ’ s scenes and people. Spencer later ...”

“... they are both gone for ever. A tiresome old savant is killed by taking a Pill of Immortality. A lady missionary is about to shoot herself when a poisonous spider comes out of a crack ‘where it had been hibernating all winter’, bites her, and causes her to drop her gun. But these goings-on are not nearly enough for Leslie Wilson, who has combined them ...”

“... Navy, which still dominates Plymouth though it has now few ships. Dominant personality is still Lady Astor, with Isaac Foot as runner-up. The television series on Lady Astor is not widely applauded in Plymouth and I, too, do not much like visiting-card television: historical characters dragged in for the sake of their ...”

“... all be a lot wiser – and sadder too, quite likely. Either we shall have found out that the Iron Lady is impregnable or she herself will have been found out. Margaret Thatcher is the favourite politician of those who like an exciting life. Her maxim in politics – she has claimed it as Thatche’s Law – is that the unexpected always happens. Certainly ...”

“... bank to put the money into my Tito fund, muttering left-wing slogans against the bullying gracious lady of the Orient. I saw her as shrouded in jewels, but not in my five shillings. By the time I was fifteen, when I had considerably added to the fund by writing a radio play on a typewriter swiped every night from my school’s secretarial department, the ...”

“... the bed, next to one of the twisted barley-sugar posts that held up the canopy. At that point the lady who had admitted us saw that we were going to make a long stay, and left us to our own devices. We went through all the rooms, each one of which (roughly speaking) is devoted to a particular phase in his career, from his days as a schoolboy cricketer in the ...”

“... have invented a name like Loona Bimberton. It takes an infallible ear for dialogue to ‘hear’ Lady Carlotta, pretending to be a governess in ‘The Schartz-Metterklume Method’, announcing: ‘I shall talk French four days of the week and Russian in the remaining three.’ ‘Russian? My dear Miss Hope, no one in the house speaks or understands ...”

“... filthy abuse pouring out of this diatribe against sex and men to see that Andrea Dworkin is a sick lady. It’s one long hysterical denunciation of sexual intercourse as really bad news for women. The way she rants on is of course the give-away symptom of sexual frustration. Clearly she can’t be getting enough of it – not surprising for someone overweight ...”

“... German Pen, then of International Pen; and when the novels The Clown (1963), Group Portrait with Lady (1971), The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (1974) and The Safety Net (1979) appeared. Some complained: what did the German film industry have against him, churning out film adaptations of his books in its slavish way, but the way I knew him was through one of ...”

“... Astonished office-workers found themselves being ferried by Edwina, in the Hispano, and Ainsworth, Lady Louis’s chauffeur, in the Rolls. Edwina had no strong opinions about the rights and wrongs of the Strike. Unlike Dickie, who blamed Communist agitators, she was simply anxious that London should not wind down and stop. Any tincture of amusement here is ...”

“... I don’t like Toronto, and neither does Morley ... Morley couldn’t wait to get home and see Lady.’ (Lady is the dog.) To compensate, Mouse writes letters to another father-figure, who appears more accessible. ‘You always look brand-new, Mr Kennedy. Whether you are clapping at Caroline doing a handstand in your ...”

“... have been told about Willy’s fauve period and partial taming, in spite of the relish with which Lady Walton speaks of her husband’s fondness for his physiotherapist; and her chief virtue, according to him, was her unmusicality, so judicious accounts of his work cannot be looked for here. This does not prevent her from dropping delicious apercus about ...”

“... encountered. Some months later, I saw a documentary made on the day of the funeral, in which a bag lady was asked for her opinion on the death of the Princess of Wales: ‘Oh, she’s died has she? I wondered why there were so many people about.’ Ten years on, with so many more screens and pages clogged with celebrity, and the broadsheets gone overtly ...”

“... and unreal for being silent. An element of voyeurism in it. The guide, a genteel Morningside lady, trains the mirror on some adjacent scaffolding where workmen are restoring a church. ‘I often wonder,’ she muses in the darkened room, ‘if one were to catch them ... well, unawares. I mean,’ she adds hastily, ‘taking a little rest.’ 3 ...”