“... costumes and sets – as if it were looking for a slot between Young Sherlock Holmes and My Fair Lady – it has an edge which is entirely contemporary in two senses. It belongs to the actual life of the men in question, not their legacy, and it speaks to concerns of the 21st century, where science looks more like magic every day. What sparks the ...”

“... her pursuers in the Mattel building, she finds herself in a secret apartment where a kind old lady, played by Rhea Perlman, offers her a cup of tea. She says her name is Ruth, and we later learn that she is the ghost of somebody who has been dead for years. Mattel created this apartment for her because she was Ruth Handler, who invented the Barbie Doll in ...”

“... is hard to understand. 17 January. The Prince of Wales and Mrs Parker-Bowles come to The Lady in the Van. Normally royalty is guaranteed to put a frost on an audience but their presence peps things up and it’s a very good house. This is because, unlike most royal persons, the Prince of Wales actually laughs and loudly too and so gets the audience ...”

“... beloved of readers and worshipped by his friends; James was 41, known mainly for The Portrait of a Lady and Daisy Miller, examples of the ‘international theme’ he’d mined with such singularity. He was a solitary figure, an arch-stylist who appeared to live as a ghost in the varnished rooms of his own sensibility. ‘Singleness consorts much better with ...”

“... out. I never wore the coat again, though we did smoke the dope. Being grown up and behaving like a lady were the main words of advice my mother had had for me on the way from Brighton to North London. Not such bad advice from someone for whom every new meeting held the possibility of ‘getting somewhere’. A marriage proposal – for her or me, it didn’t ...”

“... The old lady in the Sunday hat was telling her grandson the day was too hot for sale or rent. And just as she said this and wiped the backs of her hands with a Wet Wipe, a dog came padding down the opposite sidewalk before slowing to a halt outside the green house at 83 Beals Street, the house where John Kennedy was born ...”

“... win the Great Doncaster St Leger, Mr Gully’s bay colt Frankenstein (by Young Phantom, out of My Lady) failed to live up to expectations. Beaten into fourth place at the York Spring Meeting by Muley Moloch, Satan and Lot, in October Frankenstein, by now renamed Deceiver, finished last but two in the worst St Leger the Sporting Magazine’s correspondent had ...”

“... gently but firmly, for something I’d written half a lifetime previously about Delacroix’s Lady Macbeth Sleepwalking. ‘I think the drawing in it is quite marvellous,’ he said, ‘and Delacroix’s drawing in general comes to seem better and better the older I get. And the pose of Lady Macbeth’s arm reaching ...”

“... places of the town In which he whilom hadde al his plesaunce. ‘Lo, yonder saugh ich last my lady daunce; And in that temple, with hire eyen cleere, Me kaughte first my righte lady dere.’Having tried all these means of re-inventing her, he turns to narrative: Thanne thoughte he thus: ‘O blisful lord Cupide, Whan I ...”

“... response towards not pity or empathy but horror – hence the affinity with Jacobean drama. When Lady Macbeth says she would have plucked the nipple from her infant’s mouth and dashed his brains out, she is remembering Seneca’s Medea – the couple are childless, after all, as Macbeth’s obsession with his future lineage makes plain (there is no ...”

“... It is almost certain that if Trump is elected, Melania Trump will be the first First Lady to have posed for softcore pornographic ‘girl on girl’ photos.African Americans and Jews Trump: ‘Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.’Women As ...”

“... a triple mirror, a mustard pot, a pearl necklace from ‘Grandpapa’, a cheque for £25 from Lady Brabourne, a tablecloth and more. She noted the date the presents were received and the names of the present-givers, from Lady Sligo to Nanny.One of the thoughts the book gives rise to is just how many belongings would ...”

“... knew he could afford to wait. By the early twenties he had got his hooks into that wealthy US lady and money trouble no longer bothered him. His main interest in life was acting the ballocks as grd. seigneuer [grand seigneur]. His jealousy of the patronage Joyce enjoyed is understandable, given his own financial situation. Still, the basis of the attack ...”

“... it’s the corner of Kenilworth Road and Gibbet Hill Road to the south of the university, and the lady sitting on the bench in the background must be waiting for a bus to take her into Coventry. Maybe she’s off shopping, or going to Coventry Market. We’re in a complex, long-established, urban economy here. And the sign isn’t to some vague place called ...”