“... and seductive war widows fail to wean Louis from his obsession with Madame Laura, the local ‘hot lady’ whose stolen panties he won from a friend as a result of a bet over the timing of the German invasion. There are other things here which might suggest the earthier and homelier version of L’Education Sentimentale, though in The Sorrow of Belgium Louis ...”

“... rules of seduction, he says, with ‘two exceptions. I never deflower and I do not persist if the lady doesn’t want me.’ Regarding one of these statements the present writer’s recollection is slightly different. And then, of course, there is the wine. The reader can learn a good deal about its production and the internecine politics of the growers. But ...”

“... For the Wodehouse archive he is assembling, Edward Cazalet, grandson of the 99-year-old widowed Lady Wodehouse, recently bought, for £175, a short ts. letter from Wodehouse to a Mr Slater, dated 2 July 1953. Mr Slater had asked Wodehouse where Market Blandings was, the station for the Castle, with Jno Robinson’s taxi waiting to rattle you up to the home ...”

“... want. In the series of letters exchanged between Benjamin Disraeli and Frances Anne Vane-Tempest, Lady Londonderry (known as ‘Vane’) there’s an unexplained hiatus. A silence, beginning in 1839, the year of Disraeli’s marriage, and persisting until 1845, overtook the correspondence. Now the gap, on Disraeli’s side at least, is factitiously ...”

“... the Dead Sea, offered genuine relief to the semi-disabled. Thanks to the Maple furniture heiress, Lady Weigall, Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire achieved social distinction in the Belle Epoque; the patroness always took the last two coaches of the Boston-London train for herself and her servants. The mansion she built for herself became the officers’ mess for ...”

“... round to see (Steadying her red-sepal hat with the russet-silk flutes) Creamy-armed Hera with Lady Athene (Holding their scallop-edged parasol high) As they wobble their way down the dunes Apollonius of Rhodes, in his Medea-Jason epic, transformed Homer’s goddesses into images of aristocratic ladies of the Ptolemaic court in Alexandria, providing a ...”

“... of a married woman until the mid-19th century. Before that point, it meant something like ‘boss lady’, a female honorific, indicating authority. Some words that now feel firmly gendered originally had another meaning. ‘Vagina’ meant the scabbard of a sword. I could not hate this more. The idea that it is a protective casing for a phallic weapon feels ...”

“... said Terry. ‘That’s because she’s never been away,’ said Ballantyne. ‘All over, dear lady. You can get up now.’ And he helped Mrs Donaldson back onto her chair. ‘Ballantyne obviously fancies you,’ said Delia when they were talking in the canteen afterwards. And when Mrs Donaldson pulled a face, ‘You could do a lot worse.’ There had been ...”

“... edge of the wood, the dermatologist said, ‘extracting nourishment from the legs of unsuspecting lady passengers. Men were never affected, their stouter nether garments providing sufficient protection. The tram was disinfected, the grooves were planed out … the epidemic came to an end.’ In 2008, bugs were found on the New York subway, on wooden benches ...”

“... a pendant to one of the greatest of European portraits. (Unfortunately the painting, bequeathed by Lady Eastlake to the National Gallery, was destroyed in the flood of 1928 at the Tate Gallery, to which it had been transferred.) It illustrates the taste – not just for Raphael but for Guido Reni – against which the Pre-Raphaelites rebelled, but it also ...”

“... his back touching it, was served by white-gloved footmen, and for the first and last time took a lady to dinner in a grand procession (he did not know which arm to take, and still doesn’t). Lord Hastings was strict but fair; he discouraged fooling about at cricket; he stopped tutor and son playing football among his Chinese urns; and he tolerated only ...”

“... advised him to do some reading over the summer in preparation for his teaching), and another lady, Sylva Norman, whose literary ambitions he assisted. Teaching was as much a success in Oxford as it had been in Japan: he got on with his pupils and took great trouble over them. Divorced and remarried, he settled down happily, acquiring a reputation as a ...”

“... happy work situation for herself by going to sit and talk for a number of hours a day with an old lady in shelter care. She loved that, and then home for a bath and supper. ‘What’s on the box? Not a lot. On the radio? Not a lot. Right, get out your book.’ Mrs Bright’s resources, like those of a surprising number of retired people, had no truck with ...”

“... own name. Chamfort was the illegitimate son of Jacqueline de Vinzelles, an aristocratic married lady from the region of Clermont-Ferrand, and a young canon at the cathedral. He was dumped on a baker’s wife, whose own baby had died, and given the dead baby’s name: Sebastien Roch Nicolas. Brilliant as a schoolboy, tormented by rage and resentment when he ...”

“... seven young men named Snowball, which started a giggle that swiftly died away. Having read about Lady Ottoline and Garsington young Barry decided to become a conscientious objector, which to his great surprise rather impressed the grim headmaster, Mr Sutcliffe, and resulted in our hero’s being able to stroll past rigid platoons of classmates, ‘their ...”