“... and by the stranglement of what appears to have been a long Platonic affair with a married court lady, Frau von Stein. He longs to travel in Italy, a journey he has often imagined, and which he postponed when he came to Weimar. Finally, in 1786, he asks for and is given a leave of absence and takes off for the better part of two years, visiting ...”

“... the endless attentions to the Queen’s hair. The profession of ‘novelist’ did not exist for a lady, and Charles Burney had made his daughter abandon her potentially profitable comic drama, whose satire he thought would cause offence. So she had felt obliged to accept this post at Court, urged on by her father. Whenever the Queen’s bell rang (‘so ...”

“... she played ‘no role in the decisions that led to the worst crimes of the century’. Would a Lady Macbeth have been less ‘disappointing’? In contrast to Magda Goebbels and other true believers, Braun comes across as profoundly apolitical, even oblivious. She never joined the Nazi Party (but then Hitler wouldn’t let his sister join either). It ...”

“... and though the last thing he wants is any sort of hold-up (‘“God damn you, lady,” my grandfather said’), he can’t ignore her, stand-up guy that he is. A number of pets have gone missing, as it turns out, and a predator is suspected. In Florida an alligator is an obvious possibility, but Devaughn, the village’s night ...”

“... to be his selection, more than once, as host of a swan dinner for the Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady. Useful basic networking. Father and grandfather had been Brothers before him. Painting was the family business: eleven men called Bosch, through five generations, are titled ‘painters’ in the archive. We have a single surviving contract for a major ...”

“... and the salaries of the executives concerned.This was written a few hours before I learned of Lady Thatcher’s death and it’s an appropriate epitaph. 17 April. Shots of the cabinet and the ex-cabinet at Lady Thatcher’s funeral in St Paul’s just emphasise how consistently cowardly most of them were, the only time ...”

“... 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 ...”