“... we are told that she is the Virgin in Glory, who is normally equated with Maria Assunta (Our Lady of the Assumption), but it is argued that in this case the identification is mistaken, because the Apostles and open tomb normally shown in representations of Maria Assunta are omitted. This is not a very strong argument, since Maria Assunta was often shown ...”

“... for the US. She returned later to complete her degree as the first married undergraduate at Lady Margaret Hall. Alexander Boris de Pfeffel, their first child, was born in 1964 and baptised as a Catholic. It’s not often I hear news of her, though I know she’s a painter. I did read an interview she gave to Tatler five years ago. ‘I was engaged to ...”

“... showing the arrest of one woman – young, pale, her red hair spilling out like Delaroche’s Lady Jane Grey – at the vigil on Clapham Common on 15 March was used to illustrate the disproportionate force deployed by the police there. Watching the video footage, however, I was struck by the vigour with which she had been shouting and shaking her fist a ...”

“... nouveau riche; a ragged fisher-boy; that African lad and a jester in blackface; a crazy old lady in the local and a posh little girl’s impeccable young nurse: he does his utmost to catch every eye and achieve an understanding. From which, I read decency into Hals. The prevailing smiliness suggests he’s been venturing wisecracks. But if they fail to ...”

“... The Water Babies (1863), the chimney-sweep Tom meets the last great auk, a ‘very grand old lady’ sitting on ‘Allalonestone’ who tells the story of their extinction before weeping tears of pure oil. It’s revealing – if not surprising – that the grief is attributed to a maiden aunt. If male scientists felt grief at the idea of ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Punishment (Jill Churchill) makes it plain that Shelley is not guilty of murdering the cleaning lady in her kitchen because, as her friend Jane says, ‘If you were going to kill somebody, you’d do it where you wouldn’t have to clean up afterwards.’ Horsfield has also devoured better-known works like Cranford, in which house-proud ladies, on acquiring ...”

“... a real genius could write even more heartfelt poetry, and have an even more ardent army of young lady (and gentleman) worshippers. How inspired were Canning’s speeches; but how much more inspiration could be generated by someone with greater insight into the clash of social forces and greater skill in managing the newspapers! How Napoleon had ...”

“... his name as Cecil Graham, which Wilde was to use twenty years later as the name of a character in Lady Windermere’s Fan. He knew of Fanny and Stella, having read an account of their exploits in a pornographic work from which McKenna quotes with a certain relish. The arrest was a worrying moment for John Fiske, the American consul in Edinburgh, whose love ...”

“... cast of bourgeoisie. The appearance of public togetherness disguised a reality wherein the titled lady dismissed the wife of a city merchant and the wealthy Yorkshire gentleman rarely conversed with a lord. Vauxhall might have resembled an enchanted wood, but prince and pauper knew their place, even in ...”

“... In Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall the society woman who ships girls to Rio is called Lady Metroland. Her husband, Viscount Metroland, takes his ‘funny name’ (as Paul Pennyfeather sees it) from a fantasy fiefdom of the London Metropolitan Railway, an advertising man’s conceit which tickled the imagination of the public in the 1920s ...”

“... capable of helping them; and if the stranger who offered his help was a good skater, and if the lady could not skate at all, the help given was so material that a feeling of gratitude was the result, and acquaintance, and possibly an undesirable acquaintance, was thus formed in a way wholly contrary to the recognised social rules.’ I like to think of ...”

“... so that any charger advancing that far would trap its hooves in spokes. It is a great pity that Lady Butler was never able to do justice on canvas to a battle-scene like this. As it turned out, the two world wars offered small scope for wheelmen, but Dodge does well to note the part played by the bicycle in the Japanese advance on Singapore and by the ...”

“... the House of Lords, once exclaimed in grief: ‘I agree with everything said by the noble Baroness Lady Blackstone – a fate I never thought would befall me.’ He will not suffer that fate for much longer (provided Baroness Blackstone follows the Labour Party’s proposed education policy). Labour’s draft manifesto, New Labour: New Life For ...”

“... Bart – comes from the same family as Celia Fiennes, that admirable ‘fine’ lady of Banbury Cross, who rode side-saddle about 17th-century England, visiting one stinking ‘spaw’ after another and crisply recording all she saw. He became a baronet while still in the womb, for his father, commanding the Scots Greys in Italy, was killed ...”