“... restraint and the opulence of nature. Restraint represented by the peaked architecture and the old lady for whom all passion is spent; opulence, by the line of trees, the sky, and the marvellously buxom young lady sitting on the edge of the porch, not waiting for anything in particular, yet fertile and sure in the movement ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Paradoxically for one who lived an intensely private life, she was perhaps best known as the lady professor who had flashed across the tabloid headlines by marrying a taxi-driver. Less sensationally, she sat as a lay magistrate for more than forty years, was a sparkling panelist on popular radio programmes, and contributed to numerous select committees ...”

“... poems, since they are not always identical. The treatment in this essay of ‘A Song of a Young Lady to Her Ancient Lover’ probably overemphasises the calculation and self-consciousness of the speaker, who becomes a formidable manifestation of the Lucretian Venus, perhaps too reminiscent of Swinburne’s booted female companions in St John’s Wood. The ...”

“... carriage, driven by a coachman. Maureen used to ride in it, and the dalmatians kept by the old lady – ‘Dalmatians?’ ‘Spotted dogs’ – would trot behind. Had I been older, I’d have thought of Maureen as an eligible young lady in an early 19th-century novel, pale and presentable, with witty conversation and a ...”

“... trades of husbandry and childbirth. You wove grass and printed flowers on earth. I have found you, Lady Lion, hot and dark. V Outcomers My Mum tucked her nightdress across her dark red, riddled and swollen breast, painful, stark bag of curds that suckled me.                              In the warm fog, as I walked the road towards ...”

“... When Chekhov died in the German town of Badenweiler in 1904, at his bedside with his wife Olga Knipper and the doctor was a young Russian friend called Rabeneck. Thirty-three years later, Rabeneck sought out Olga Knipper, then on tour with the Moscow Art Theatre, in a Paris restaurant. Olga recognised but did not acknowledge him: on either side of her sat an ‘archangel’, a Soviet watchdog ...”

“... steering wheel.– So who’s that little broad with the freckles and orange hair?(Lord God-Lady, forgive me, forgive Murph: Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn,Born the same day as that misfortune with the Arch-Duke, right?)– Maxine, I say. – Are you doing her? – Christ, Murph, I’m only 14!This plainly displeased him. You could say Murph was my unofficial ...”

“... this up by examining the remarkable letters written by Mrs Thrale, the Elizabeth Montagu set, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the Duchess of Devonshire or Lady Elizabeth Foster; the Duchess’s novel Sylph is not treated, either. In the second half of the book, ‘Literary Achievements’, we are on firmer ground: but here ...”

“... for an introductory meeting with our medieval supervisor, Mrs Helena Shire, a formidable Scottish lady of confident views and startling formality. As she ushered us into her sitting room we realised that it already had an occupant. A small, gaunt, elderly man in a jacket and open-necked shirt stood in the French window. I think I remember a look of something ...”

“... Novels in which Byron appears more or less thinly disguised began during his own lifetime with Lady Caroline Lamb’s Glenarvon of 1816. (‘I read Glenarvon too, by Caro Lamb,’ Byron remarked sourly after it was sent to him on the Continent. ‘God damn.’) Mary Shelley herself would contribute several to the list. And they continue to be ...”

“... a divided allegiance. They put God before country.’ Lees-Milne was in the social circuit of Lady Cunard, attending her ‘ordinary’ at the Dorchester Hotel, which, when frustrated by rationing, she despised as ‘a commercial traveller’s doss-house’; he was also welcomed at Lady Colefax’s ‘ordinary’ at the ...”

“... Women’s football as organised by women in this era was more interesting. Nettie Honeyball and Lady Florence Dixie began recruiting for their British Ladies’ Football Club in 1895, making no secret of their suffragist leanings. Honeyball – probably the pseudonym of Mary Hutson – told Sketch that she intended to prove that ‘women are not the ...”

“... these all comprising what have become known as the ‘Fair Young Man’ Sonnets; the ‘Dark Lady’ Sonnets, from 127-54, he gives to 1591-95. Beyond such scholarly and critical estimates, helped out by analysis of word usage, there are a very few supporting facts from contemporary reference. In 1598, Francis Meres made in Palladis Tamia his famous ...”