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“... One evening, heading back to the flat of a young waitress he’s picked up, he discovers a South London estate abuzz: a three-year-old girl, Mia Enright, all ‘blonde hair in pigtails, big blue eyes’, has gone missing; the rumour is that she was last seen playing with a very different kind of girl, the wild, dark-haired, ten-year-old Lucy Green.It’s ...”

“... until such a time as Asquith, the prime minister, agreed to receive a deputation from her East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS), the working-class women’s organisation that had broken away (or been cut off) from the militant mothership controlled by Emmeline, Pankhurst’s mother, and her sister Christabel. ‘I feel it is my duty to take this ...”

“... L.W. Brandt, came from a family of wealthy merchant bankers based in Hamburg; he had been born in London, where his own father had been running the English branch of the company, and was registered as a British subject. This brought complications when war broke out. At first the Brandts supported Germany: Delany’s book includes a photograph taken in ...”

“... This elaborate creation, we later find out, is the handiwork of Norbert Montalescot and his sister Louise; Louise has been imprisoned by the African King Talou VII for having had an affair with his chief enemy, Yaour, and her release depends on the Montalcscots’ completing this statue and a number of other appallingly ...”

“... When he recovered he left the Air Force; and living in Paris had a hopeless, wounding affair with Louise de Vilmorin, who left him because he talked too much about ‘the sublime moments between heaven and earth’. Loquacity was a failing often mentioned by those who knew Saint-Exupéry, and it grew on him; but at this period he kept it in check well enough ...”

“... Dutchman, a versatile but unambitious man who is driven, by the accidents of fate, to travel to London and to thinly settled America, before he meets a lonesome death in the Frisian Islands: the third section is about this man’s son, who becomes a boy actor, playing girls on Continental tours of Shakespeare’s plays. The plausibility is more than ...”

“... was a serial army girlfriend, whom his friend Charles Carrington referred to as ‘a well known “London Lady” much run after by the Household Brigade’. She seduced Bertie while he was attending a military camp at the Curragh in Ireland. We know exactly when he first made love to her – and the second and third occasions – because he recorded it in an ...”

“... only in Italy, geographic heartland of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.’ While London warmed to castrati, and paid them fortunes, the English did not castrate their own. One contemporary of Handel’s commented on this: ‘You Englishmen complain that castrati are too costly, so that too much money ends up in Italian lands, but if you want ...”

“... The new biography of Audrey Hepburn, by Barry Paris, a writer already praised for his books on Louise Brooks and Garbo, is an acute, tender-hearted and entertaining dish of Hepburn facts – he interviewed friends and family, and has a sharp eye for her film-work’s idiosyncrasies; more important, he offers a grid for dream inquiries into star ...”

“... no future. She exists purely in the moment.’ It is during one of her repeated journeys into London that Rachel first catches sight through her train window of a woman, Megan, who rouses her curiosity, but later disappears and will subsequently be found murdered. Rachel was on the scene on the night of the crime: it is where she once lived, where ...”

“... again may not – have died in flagrante with Queen Victoria’s ‘bohemian’ daughter Princess Louise. Politicians used smart dress to cover poor morals: Joseph Chamberlain sported a monocle and an orchid but behaved badly to the future Beatrice Webb. The Liberal prime minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman ate so much that he ballooned to twenty stone.The ...”

“... Before the machine-guns started chattering the young men had all sat around in country houses and London drawing-rooms fancying themselves for their own brilliance. Privileged by birth, they allowed themselves the double privilege of tempering their philistine heritage with bohemian pursuits. But their puffed-up chests could not keep out bullets. Lady Diana ...”

“... is important here. It was only once those interventions were well underway, not before, that the London attacks of 7 July 2005 took place. It doesn’t make sense for Cameron to argue that air attacks on Raqqa will help prevent IS attacks on London, when the recent attacks in Paris happened 14 months into an intensive ...”

“... VII; the artist-engraver Gustave Doré; and at least one woman, the trouser-wearing sculptor Louise Abbéma. Gottlieb refers to Abbéma, somewhat ungallantly, as ‘mannish’ and ‘monkeylike’, and it’s true, the pint-sized Louise wasn’t exactly an oil painting. Having Susan Boyle eyebrows didn’t help. But ...”

“... had a growing client list and was making a real name for himself as a celebrity crimper and ‘top London hairdresser’ as the papers referred to him. I used to get annoyed with him for never being home. I wanted more of his attention. Following some bad times with the crimper and the loss of her record company, Lulu has found popularity again by singing ...”