“... his wife died he had set only one goal for himself: to turn his daughter into a great lady.’ Surprise, surprise. ‘The road was long and uncertain for a mule trader who did not know how to read or write and whose reputation as a horse thief was not so much proven as widespread.’ He turns out, in fact, to be no mere horse thief but an ...”

“... Album (1973), a book they wrote together, a sceptic might remark that the poem ‘Learning-Lady’ (which begins ‘I sprained my wrist taking her skirt off’) shows little interest in female intellectualism except for the purpose of an erotic joke; yet few could deny the alertly orgasmic profusion of ‘Coming-...”

“... in his enthusiasm was an earlier staple in his reading, the deeds of bold knights of chivalry. Our Lady the Mother of God became the object of his chivalric devotion, and once he was able to limp along the roads of Spain, he sought her in prayer during a whole night spent before her image in her shrine at Montserrat, outside Barcelona. So far not much else was ...”

“... As Brophy does not point out, such sentiments are reserved, in novels, to wicked women, such as Lady Bellaston and Roxana. One of the drawbacks of Brophy’s collection of evidence is that she is sticking entirely to the middle class. Yet within the range of the middle class, too, she prefers the upper or genteel end, and we get relatively few glimpses of ...”

“... Goneril. An emotional entanglement leaves her ‘exactly in the condition of Lord Hardy and Lady Charlotte in The Funeral’ (by Steele). Her rift with the theatre manager Fleetwood is glossed over with a quote from Peachum. Even in moments of trauma, her sense of theatre is uppermost. Returning home one night to find her baby daughter in convulsive ...”

“... the local forum. A teacher with his pupils is using the colonnade as a classroom; a seemingly posh lady is giving some coins to a beggar with a dog; some men appear to be reading a notice pinned up on the columns. But more than anything else we see rough and ready trade going on: some hawkers are wandering round trying to flog fabric to women; a couple of ...”

“... Logan made no reply. But he was beginning to feel greatly irritated. ‘A woman? You would like a lady, a young, curvy lady, a very young lady, or a very old madam perhaps for sahib?’ ‘Sh ...’ began Logan, giving the skinny little man a bit of a push. ‘A man? A boy? A little ...”

“... world, the great painter will be said to paint himself in every portrait. The exquisite old lady reading in a pool of light holds the stillness of Rembrandt himself as he paints, and Velasquez looks back at us through the eyes of a court dwarf. This self-involvement may all the more readily be found in literature since most poets tend to be experts on ...”

“... off her chair. Duff Cooper’s philanderings are often quite funny. Having rekindled an old flame, Lady Warrender, he adjourns with her to his Gower Street house, now emptied of furniture and up for sale. Suddenly, while they’re at it, there’s a loud banging on the door downstairs which Duff Cooper eventually has to answer and it’s the estate agent with ...”

“... board, fads as I thought even as a boy of ten, picked up from Miss Thompson, a herbalistic lady living in the Hallidays who used to give Dad burdock and suchlike ‘for his blood’. 21 February. On the 100th anniversary of his birth a lot of tosh being talked about Auden as poet of Cumbria. Auden couldn’t have inhabited his ideal landscape, however ...”

“... find them underneath their tucks and ruffles. The firm got a splendid boost when the milk-maidenly Lady Diana Spencer’s rich charms were photographed showing through a windblown and backlit Laura Ashley skirt, just on the eve of her transformation into Princess-of-Wales-elect. The Laura Ashley style of dress offered sharp visual contrast to the simple ...”

“... He travelled widely, including yearly visits to both England (he was a friend of the salonnière Lady Cecil) and Karlsbad (his brother Albert had married into the Jewish élite of Vienna). From 1867 to 1869, he lived in New York, where he married the beautiful impoverished daughter of an American dentist, a marriage which ended disastrously when his wife was ...”

“... men. No doubt they were; but tender pink faces are by no means limited in the Frozen North to lady visitors, who usually come either in the form of faithful squaws or broken blossoms. Although ‘Even Unto Death’ is one of London’s feeblest stories, it demonstrates the odd and winning openness of his literary persona: he is never at all shy about his ...”

“... In the melee at my inner suburban polling-booth we were marshalled by a sergeant-majorly black lady, and voting instructions were pasted up in 22 languages other than English. The present rate of economic growth is just enough to hold unemployment where it is. Labour has to catch up on the environment and on sustainable development, to fund those election ...”

“... Sir Archibald when forty years later Mervyn Griffith-Jones, the Senior Treasury Counsel against Lady Chatterley, was still getting his in a twist about the possible evil effects of the book on his wife and servants. Compared with Hug-Hellmuth’s own biography, A Young Girl’s Diary is tame as tame can be. Grete Lainer – a pseudonym, in accordance with ...”