“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... the fastest-growing job category, it is also fashionable, with Kanye West signed on at the Gap and Lady Gaga in line to be taught about millinery by Philip Treacy. In Intern Nation, Ross Perlin, a survivor of serial internships on three continents, describes the lengths to which graduates must go to secure an unpaid intern position (often the first of ...”

“... pathetic triviality’, though he later fell foul of the regulations himself. So did Lady Astor, Lord Donegall and the army’s provost marshal, no less. It was a smart move by the authorities to target these figures. It was smart, too (though not mentioned here), to make such a play of the king’s and Churchill’s strict adherence to food ...”

“... Blues’, W.H. Auden Marseille is an old-fashioned town. ‘You still have a queen,’ the lady checking museum tickets remarked. ‘So why don’t you cut her throat? Kings and queens are pointless, cost a fortune.’ Red Republicanism, 1793 brand, is not extinct here. This year, Marseille is a European Capital of Culture, which means it must make a ...”