“... a party here says she’s for Hungerford.’ In this context, ‘party’ meant a funny old lady, but it was a suitable term for my grandmother, who carried an atmosphere of festivity around with her. She loved popular tunes and at any period of her life would be ‘mad about’ some contemporary hit – from The Belle of New York, The Merry ...”

“... sleep in a cat’s basket. Even at the age of 20 – the year of her personal crisis as a young lady – she could hardly manage stairs. She may have reached a height of two feet. She has a tiny safe income, until the crash comes. She might be a toy, an object, a mere collector’s oddity but for the fact that she is aggressive, rash, sharp-tongued and ...”

“... Cornucopias of fruit and vegetables disgorge within a general herbaceousness. An ancient lady ‘yanked at some convolvulus that threatened to smother the phlox’. Indoors, ‘potted pelargoniums shed their yellowing leaves over the piles of pamphlets and Country Lifes. A budgie clawed at the bars of its cage; demijohns of home-made wine were busy ...”

“... were being made to drip-feed £990 million into BL. There is a nice picture of the Iron Lady attending a Leyland lunch in 1979. ‘Well, Michael Edwardes, why should we pour further funds into British Leyland?’ she asked, and then ‘glared stonily around the table at each of us in turn’. It was, apparently, a disastrous occasion – until a ...”

“... constantly cross-fertilised with his bibliographical and archaeological studies: the mutilated Lady Chapel sculptures at Ely, for example, could at last be recognised as illustrating not canonical but Apocryphal scenes, and his immersion in these byways of legend gave him a special perspective when dealing with medieval manuscripts, wall-paintings or ...”

“... taken by one of his many Hungarian hangers on. Alex was in his late fifties when he made Alexa, Lady Korda. She was in her early twenties, about five years older than Michael. What follows is the discreet but engaging story of an uneasy triangle in which all the parties come into sharp life. Alex should not have married again. He knew it, but he was lonely ...”

“... start by denying the fact was no more than the code of a gentleman then required: the honour of a lady might not be impugned, however dubious her claim to that status. To sue newspapers, as he did, for printing the truth was ill-judged and worse, but it followed necessarily from the original lie. To admit that lie in public and in Parliament, to resign seat ...”

“... liked to hear what it was like to carry a standard in battle, or to know more about the Spanish lady to whom he gave a lift under fire, or about the wounded soldier he decided to carry on his ‘private mules’ rather than leave him dying at the roadside with the others: but on these matters Aitchison keeps a tight lip, just as he does on the daily details ...”

“... extraction, in conception (and in physique) somewhere between Callas and Caballé. The lady, who has been pursued for months by a malicious paparazzo, is found stabbed in the house of her fabulously rich protector (somewhere between Onassis and Mr Merdle) on a lake island in the South of New Zealand, after a performance of an opera by her protégé ...”

“... in part out of a need to make herself indispensable to them and to counter their criticism that ‘Lady Natasha’s nothing but a dilettante!’ Despite ‘those wonderfully intelligent eyes of his’ and his brilliance and originality as a political thinker – qualities we are required to take on trust – Senya is made an absurd figure as well as an ...”

“... Porn Society’. We meet once a week with some of our friends (Dr Littlewinkle and his good lady, the Smithsons, Major Dewdrop and Fred and Rita Snipe, who live opposite, form the hard-core nucleus) to discuss sex, drugs, nudity and violence ... a signed photograph and message of encouragement would mean a lot to our members. Mrs Thatcher’s private ...”

“... Dick sat next to Eliza, or that on Sunday 2 May 1802 J.F. (himself) was seated between Lord and Lady Thomond. For us, too, it can be a delight to savour such diagrams – especially when they include names like Fuseli, Flaxman and Turner. (On one occasion the company appears to have been particularly grand: Titian, Rubens, Van Dyck – until one looks again ...”

“... Laforgue developed vers libre, which Eliot was to perfect in ‘Prufrock’ and ‘Portrait of a Lady’. ‘I forget to rhyme,’ Laforgue wrote, ‘I forget the number of syllables, I forget to set it in stanzas – the lines themselves begin in the margin like prose. The old regular stanza only turns up when a popular quatrain is needed.’ Eliot also ...”

“... a slide-lecture in an apartment building about ways of avoiding being raped – it was called ‘Lady Beware’ – the rapt audience was entirely male. At the Academy, a gay LA eaterie, all waiters are dressed as cops and the maitre d’ as a police lieutenant. One young gay took the law enforcement fantasy to its natural conclusion and seduced a speed-cop ...”

“... about the inhabitants of Mr Polly’s world: the dyspeptic grocers’ sons and their flat-footed lady friends who work in drapery establishments. But that was not low enough. For Reynolds was no leveller. Low is how he really thought of it; at one point he uses the expression ‘pigging it’ of his life chez Woolley. In his books it is de haut en bas from ...”