“... time, interspersed with a heavily adapted version of King Lear and Mrs Siddons’s much admired Lady Macbeth. On the new larger stages, selection was made on the basis of scenic opportunities. Henry VIII enjoyed a vogue, as did Colley Cibber’s version of Richard III, famous for the line ‘Off with his head, so much for Buckingham!’ A toy version from ...”

“... month. The sun was too high in the sky for most of the wild creatures favoured by Artemis, the lady of wild things, potnia theron; all the rabbits and mice were hiding in the undergrowth. I went to Brauron with the poet Alicia Stallings, who recently translated the Batrachomyomachia, or The Battle between the Frogs and the Mice, an ancient mock-epic that ...”

“... it lay in the Belle Époque bulk of the Palace of Fine Arts; for his mother, in the European-style Lady Baltimore café; for Villoro himself, it was the Torre Latinoamericana skyscraper, completed in 1956, the year he was born; for his daughter, it is the Frikiplaza, a three-storey complex devoted to video games and anime merchandise. Yet in presenting his own ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... eyed me in astonishment and began to laugh: “Can you mountain-climb? An elegant little lady like you shouldn’t be traipsing around mountains.’ ” Poor sap, he isn’t to know what he’s up against. Within another page and a half Leni has tracked down and charmed Dr Fanck. A few mornings later she receives a parcel. Inside is a ...”

“... met such a Gorgon ... I don’t really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one’). 5. Preposterous rural churchmen are on hand to supply authenticity (‘My sermon on the meaning of manna in the wilderness can be adapted to almost any occasion’). 6. Ridiculous matrimonial entanglements are resolved, by absurd ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... irritating about this presentation of the past as a giant Miss Universe pageant, with a lady-pleasing subsection for dishy gents, is that tucked away within it, and relatively unexplored, are some interesting propositions. One of them Professor Marwick puts with, I trust, calculated banality: ‘if it was a woman’s duty to be beautiful, could a ...”

“... evenings at the shop where Mikage’s grandmother had often bought flowers; he had adored the old lady, and now invites Mikage to come and live for as long as she wants to in his own home. The delicate relationship between the two, which never quite defines itself, is described, day by day, with a kind of touching persistence, as though the narrator’s life ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... the address by Mrs Jeane Kirkpatrick, not only American Ambassador at the United Nations, but a lady with the ear of the President of the United States. No one who heard that address can be in the slightest doubt that this American Government will do precisely as it thinks fit in these and other relevant matters. So cursory was the consultation with Downing ...”