“... The longest of the letters in this volume contains a small informal essay on The Portrait of a Lady, and Woolson’s admiration for it doesn’t preclude some sharp comments on the novel’s evasiveness when it comes to representing the heroine’s feeling for her future husband. ‘She tells Mrs Touchett that she doesn’t love Lord Warburton; but she ...”

“... nice about Thatcher, recalling that after her first ministerial question time she went into the Lady Members’ room to find Thatcher ironing a dress and was congratulated on her performance: ‘After all,’ the Ironing Lady told Williams, ‘we can’t let them [men] get the better of us.’ In public, however, Thatcher ...”

“... guilt. They wrote to me in London and gave me the gossip, which was normal for life in the Lady Chichester, but hilarious, wilder and more poignant than most everyday goings-on. Pam, after sitting in a cold bath to shrink her Levis in the approved way, had a panic attack, and had to be cut out of her saturated skintight jeans; Sally hadn’t left her ...”

“... set’ loomed large in the police investigation and the press coverage. Defenders of Lady Lucan felt she was frozen out by them; detractors said that her unhappy presence on the club’s ‘widows’ bench’ embarrassed her husband and helped to undermine the marriage.Elisabeth Luard’s impression of the club’s atmosphere as one of ...”

“... never is,’ Maureen said. ‘She’s got a friend in Lawnswood.’‘Sure,’ says Michael. ‘A lady friend.’I said, ‘Stop it, the pair of you, or you’ll do your homework upstairs.’ I can’t bear it when he starts bickering. One minute he’s so grown up, the next he’s back to being ten years old.‘I’m sorry, precious,’ and he puts on his ...”

“... Orianda will never marry the temperate Gerald but he’s unable to see it. In ‘The Handsome Lady’ the widowed Caroline tells the unhappily married John that ‘if there is love between you there is faithfulness, if there is no love there is no fidelity,’ but he’s too slow to take the hint or too worried there would be gossip, and by the time his ...”

“... been locked in a tempestuous on-again, off-again affair for some 12 years. How to tell the grand lady of Coppet what he had done – and how to stage manage the scene that was bound to ensue? He spent most of the summer of 1808 visiting Madame de Staël in Coppet – where she held court during her banishment from Paris by Napoleon – but never summoned up ...”

“... historian’s insistence on evolution. The first poem he has chosen, an epitaph by Elizabeth, Lady Tanfield, is notable partly because it reveals the scope of the research which has gone into the preparation of this anthology (the text is inscribed on Sir Lawrence Tanfield’s tomb in Burton Parish Church), and partly because it is so resolutely ...”

“... of a ‘relation’, and after his death Charles explained that this relation was their mother, Lady Drysdale. Miriam Benn doubts whether tenderness for his mother’s sensibilities can really have been the motive for George’s determined anonymity, on the grounds that Lady Drysdale was quite thick-skinned about sex. I ...”

“... vice-chancellors to stop admitting students whose spelling and grammar are not up to scratch. Lady Blatch, a junior education minister, has called on school examining boards to exclude television programmes from the assessment material for English courses. Behind Mr Patten and Lady Blatch is a powerful group of ...”

“... her name in our language is called CREDIT ... ’Tis strange to think how absolute this lady is; how despotically she governs all her actions: if you court her, you lose her, or must buy her at unreasonable rates; and if you don’t discharge her to a tittle of your agreement, she is gone, and perhaps may never come again as long as you live ...”

“... been many little boys like that, whom wisdom and love turned into sober members of society. But Lady Montgomery – it was entirely in character that on her husband’s becoming Prelate of the Order of St Michael and St George she adopted the style of an (honorary) knight’s wife, though she had no right to it – was not wise in the management of a tough ...”

“... the museum a million dollars made a frontal attack. Irwin reports it: Later that evening this lady came up to me and told me, literally told me that I was not to do this kind of thing any more, that I was no longer to perform in this way ... She just insisted that the whole thing was absolutely un-Christian and anti-American ... I was to cease and ...”

“... grandmother – my mother’s mother – Dona Tranquilina.’ Tranquilina means ‘the Quiet Old Lady’ in Spanish. ‘She was a fabulous storyteller who could tell wild tales of the supernatural with a most solemn expression on her face. As I was growing up, I often wondered whether or not her stories were truthful. Usually, I tended to believe her because ...”

“... find a husband is between 22 (fresh out of college) and 27 – after that you become a ‘leftover lady’, meaning you’re too old for an ‘ideal match’. Before 18, any form of puppy love is strictly forbidden, by the school and the parents. For men, the criterion isn’t age: it’s wealth. At weekends public parks in big cities such as Beijing and ...”