“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... old name for Heraklion); exiles have dealings with the sultan; the implausibly beautiful lady Alatiel finds no fewer than nine lovers, from merchants to princes, in locations ranging from Majorca to Smyrna. There are even brief glimpses of Northern Europe. The fortunes of three spendthrift brothers are revived when their agent meets a helpful abbot ...”

“... account, while still a midshipman, deserting his ship in the Seychelles and living with an exotic lady called Zela who was always clad in striped cotton ‘like a pilot fish’. Both were obsessively aquatic and Zela ended up eaten by a shark. Undeterred, Trelawney went to live at Usk in Wales with his new wife Augusta, where he would sit all day in a lake ...”

“... forth to an art gallery one day, who should he meet but a hippy. The hippy was a beautiful young lady, rather thin but very clean, and she was known to her friends as Shoe. Shoe had wandered in many lands, pursued various trades and callings, sampled most of the religions of the earth and most of its banned substances. Sometimes Shoe sold lavender bags, or ...”

“... a seamstress’s scraps and cake mixture and the sea and ground glass and Oedipus and the moon and Lady Macbeth and marriage and footprints in the sand are jumbled together. You’re not sure what she means when she says a jigsaw is a marriage is a plate, and you’re relieved to come across a patch of direct speech. After six metaphors we get to the first bit ...”

“... the graces of a gentleman. It was he who supposedly held up a coach containing a knight and his lady and invited that lady to dance a spirited coranto with him, later accepting only £100 of the £400 her complaisant husband had with him. After execution at Tyburn his body was exposed in a tavern in St Giles where ladies ...”

“... cultural significance, hosts and attendees had to work harder to make an impression. In May 1749, Lady Elizabeth Chudleigh, maid of honour to the Princess of Wales, appeared at the Ranelagh Gardens masquerade in the character of Iphigenia, wearing from the waist up only a see-through gauze covering. She had been the subject of scandal before, with reports of ...”

“... of dealing with the world. Macgoye seems to have most affinity with Wairimu, a Kikuyu, the oldest lady in the refuge and the one who has seen most. Of all the characters in the book, Wairimu is granted the most developed self-consciousness, so she emerges as the everywoman figure, the character whose destiny the reader takes to be representative, and around ...”

“... Smith’. It’s a deeply affectionate term. Granny Smith is everyone, but particularly every old lady who lives alone and for whom the mail service is a lifeline. When an old lady gives me a Christmas card with a fiver slipped in with it and writes, ‘Thank you for thinking of me every day,’ she means it. I might be the ...”