“... go according to plan, a story given to us in incomplete instalments, was one of the subjects of Lady Oracle (1976); at the end of that novel, the heroine, Joan, says: ‘I won’t write any more Costume Gothics, though; I think they were bad for me. But maybe I’ll try some science fiction.’ Joan’s words seem prophetic of her own creator’s ...”

“... second chamber variously at about 50 per cent (1998) and 84 per cent (1999). Lord Callaghan, Lady Thatcher, Sir Edward Heath, John Major and Cardinal Winning all met the Commissioners. So did the editors of the Times and the Guardian, Lord Habgood, Lord Howe, the Duke of Buccleuch (the only duke to surface), Professors Scruton and Bogdanor, as well as ...”

“... her to a tea shop for a snack and Virginia Woolf was sitting at the next table. (Neither great lady deigned to acknowledge the other.) And not long ago I met an elderly female couple – two very elegant Syrian women – who had lived for many years in Paris on the rue Jacob, across from the house in which the flamboyant lesbian writer and expatriate ...”

“... this was a moment that was unreal and that we were just characters in a play,’ Johnson’s wife, Lady Bird, noted. More than any past presidential transition, Kennedy’s death and funeral, along with Johnson’s ascension to office, became a made-for-TV drama. Beginning with the first reports that Kennedy had been shot and up until the funeral three days ...”

“... their fear of authority figures – immigration inspectors, a doctor’s receptionist, a lollipop lady – leads them to trust the wrong people: Avtar hands over his passport to a man who’s giving him work, and never sees it again. The competition they find themselves reduced to is degrading for everyone, but clinging to each other, as Randeep clings to ...”

“... and nearly dobs himself in to HMRC, but is bested by his appetites and comes to a sticky end. Lady Gunn also seems to be at the mercy of desires that have banished reason. She is having an 11-floor basement built. When Rachel asks the project manager why Lady Gunn wants an 11th floor he replies: ‘Nothing. She can’t ...”

“... respected, a notable, a guildsman and a member of the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady in ’s-Hertogenbosch. If that is surprising it is because we are too prone to underestimate the degree to which the dominance of the Inquisition, with its accompanying theology of repression, the tyranny of governments both civil and ecclesiastical, and ...”

“... cinemas – and Crimea, whose tagline reads: ‘Love is stronger than hate.’ I asked the lady selling tickets whether it was a romantic drama. As she began to answer, her colleague interjected: ‘Young man, what are you talking about? It’s about how we took back Crimea!’ The lady smiled, resigned: ‘It’s ...”

“... was persuaded.’ By the Twenties, she had become enthralled by the glamour and political clout of Lady Astor, the Conservative MP who raised money from the rich for McMillan’s causes. Dedicating to Astor – with the epigraph ‘Party is not enough’ – the ‘Life’ she wrote of her own sister Rachel, McMillan concluded her political career with an ...”

“... to live with her much of the time while in flight from his second wife ‘La’, who had been born Lady Ursula Chetwynd-Talbot, a descendant of Shakespeare’s Talbot of the Hundred Years War. Although Nigel Jones makes rather a thing of regarding her as a femme fatale, and Patrick as an abject snob for wanting to marry her, it sounds more innocent and ...”

“... worthy and more extraordinary. Washington recapitulates the story as told in the books of Lady Emily Lutyens and her daughter Mary, both deeply involved in it, to the dismay of Lady Emily’s husband, the architect Edwin Lutyens. Krishnamurti, son of an Indian Theosophist hangeron, was picked up on a Madras beach by ...”

“... and go to Innisfree, and plant nine bean rows there, is chided for preferring to take tea with Lady Gregory. He is not. For the serendipitous, there are quaint facts in plenty. The first man suspended for saying ‘damn’ in the Commons seems to have been that flamboyant Scot, Cunninghame Graham, then Liberal Member for South Lanark. Lord Vansittart is ...”

“... past few years, Parks has been awarded a Congressional medal, been invited to sit beside the First Lady during a State of the Union address by President Clinton, and been named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most significant individuals of the 20th century. Last December, at the street corner where she was arrested, Montgomery’s city fathers opened the ...”

“... although not by everybody, held to have been worsted by Miss Elizabeth Anscombe, a young lady who smoked cigars, combined Roman Catholicism with logical positivism, and was on her way to becoming Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge. Lewis himself wrote to a friend, Dom Bede Griffiths, that Miss Anscombe had completely demolished his specific ...”

“... been missed. The discussion of Colbert and the arts draws heavily on an excellent old monograph by Lady Emilia Frances Dilke: some readers might have liked to know that Lady Frances (née Strong) was once the wife of Mark Pattison, and was widely believed to be the original of George Eliot’s Dorothea Casaubon. The First ...”