“... about his non-payment of a very small loan, and next he makes a highly aristocratic marriage to a lady twenty years older than himself. Medlicott’s avatars are amusing enough, yet do not really strike us as leading anywhere, and this is an example of an important law. High talent in autobiography (whether fictional or of the real-life kind) shows itself in ...”

“... and engaging realistic world is invaded at a certain point by fantastical elements: an old lady fishing by the Thames seems to know Holly’s name and her future; in an underpass Holly hallucinates her little brother Jacko; worse follows when two strangers who have taken her in are found slumped on the ground, their eyes open and their pupils ...”

“... examines in rich detail the rediscovery of Britain’s Gothic heritage, with its cult of the ‘lady’ as the embodiment and guardian of chivalric values. Some women writers, such as the novelist and critic Clara Reeve and the translator Susannah Dobson, seized on this image as a vehicle for their cultural aspirations. Others, notably the republican ...”

“... somnambulists and incubus-sufferers attend summer camp to be cured of their sleep problems. ‘Lady Yeti and the Palace of Artificial Snows’ is a Peeping Tom parable about two boys who hide under a table to watch an adults-only night at an ice skating rink, which descends into an orgy masked by swirls of fake snow. The stories are about the limits of ...”

“... the North Sands shipyard. The ‘bronchial blast’ of a hooter sounded, startling Macmillan. ‘Lady Dorothy was quicker on the uptake. “When the whistle blows,” she explained, “they all go off for their luncheon.”’ Brien, a native of the region, and indeed of the working class, was not slow to pounce. There are no quotations from Liberace, but ...”

“... than the depiction of people. The portrait of a continent is not the same as the portrait of a lady, say, and neither is a ‘portrait of the times’, the title of a vast and dazzling exhibition of contemporary Chinese art – around 120 artists and several hundred works – at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai (until 10 November), a former power plant ...”

“... parcel protocol flashed into his mind. He muttered ‘Bomb’. ‘That’s no word to use to a lady, you naughty old thing. Look, it’s a book. I don’t think we’re up to it today. I’ll just put it here next to your tooth glass.’ When the nurse had left the room he ignored the rubbery hospital eggs and the dark liquid that they passed off as coffee ...”

“... spinster mused, realising that it was a state she herself would never attain. For the maiden lady, her claim to a home was ‘no less significant an idea for being a memory’ or simply an unrealistic but invaluable illusion which she kept well hidden, except in the intimacy of her journal. Such a woman was wise to have relatively few possessions, a ...”

“... and politicians committed to human rights. Foreign policy was largely determined by what ‘The Lady’ had to say. Now there are bigger strategic and commercial interests in Myanmar, and her hold over Western governments has loosened. But in the inevitable cacophony that will follow election day, her voice will sound loudest. So it will be ...”

“... Dürer supposedly wrote during his second visit to Venice in 1506: Then I realised that the lady herself was no longer young, but well past the age of childbearing, and that her narrow brown face had the finely quilted texture that you see on the faces of ageing women in hot countries. Her robe was leaden black and the dress beneath was neither blue nor ...”

“... in the country. On the Tel Aviv seashore, private yachts share the sea with armed patrols. ‘Lady, you’re in a closed military zone,’ a guard mutters, when I stray beyond an elegant new marina. In shabby downtown Jerusalem, by contrast, there are two guards for every bus: one at the stop, one on the bus itself. Many restaurants have barricades around ...”

“... sisters who have lived all their lives in the same house, with a ‘silver-framed photograph of Lady Diana’ and ‘ranks of bridal dolls’. Ivy gives Shakespeare a diary of the most important events of her life: Cow shed started, 6 June 1940 Maud got her false teeth, 22 September 1941 We had electric light put through, 9 July 1943 Uncle Joe passed ...”

“... by Scott on sale in the giftshop at Loch Katrine, once universally famous as the domain of The Lady of the Lake. The contrast at the heart of Watson’s book is between Abbotsford, the showcase that Scott constructed to exhibit himself, and Haworth Parsonage, home of the Brontës, which ‘dramatises female authorship as unsuccessful to the point of ...”

“... only 16 humans in the world under the protection of the Secret Service – the president, first lady and first daughter, the VP and the second family, ex-presidents and ex-first family members (imagine that . . . an entire agency organised around 16 beating hearts) – and 16 lives meant 16 details.’ A riot breaks out in Illinois after flash flooding, and ...”

“... he refuses to kill the emperor. Anna, infuriated by her husband’s lack of virility, rages like Lady Macbeth, fuming that she should have been the man and he the woman. On this scurrilous tale, invented almost ninety years after the events it purports to relate, rests the legend of Anna’s treason. In fairness to Byzantinists, scheming empresses weren’t ...”