“... 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 ...”

“... whose job satisfaction seems to be derived from obstructing the public. There used to be a lady called Vera, employed to receive orders for photocopies in the Lenin Library. She could always find some excuse to turn down a book: it was too old, or it was in a special collection, or it simply couldn’t be copied. She had learnt to refuse my books as ...”

“... When​ Marie-Antoinette couldn’t sleep, she would ring for a lady-in-waiting to come and read to her; a rota of lectrices was on call at Versailles at any time of day or night; before radio or talking books, this was one of the luxuries of the Ancien Régime. The queen could have lit her bedside candle and read to herself, but it wasn’t just a rich woman’s indolence that made that remedy less appealing ...”

“... According to one female patient, his ‘beautiful small white hands were the envy of many a lady’. His insistence that his body not be examined after his death confirmed the impression that he had something to hide. It requires an ‘overlarge draft on human credulity’, Stoker wrote, to imagine that cross-dressing women in the military went ...”

“... the crusader were joined, much to her parents’ chagrin. ‘I was brought up, my mother hoped, a lady,’ de Mille wrote, ‘and ladies, my father knew, did not dance.’ Agnes at first wanted to be an actress. ‘I practised acting every night in bed – dreadful scenes of having both my legs amputated, dying at the scaffold, coming upon the family ...”

“... has not transformed the academic world to an extent that makes a book championing Victorian lady mediums look like the safest way of securing a reputation as a historian. The risks have paid ...”

“... the Oscar Wilde trial,’ Ashley comments on Corbett v. Corbett in her 2006 memoir, The First Lady, ‘had a civil matter led to such socially disastrous consequences.’ For Justice Ormrod, the case – ‘the first occasion on which a court in England has been called on to decide the sex of an individual’ – was straightforward. Because Ashley had ...”

“... we never know. But his next step was to enter into a contract of marriage with his ward, Elizabeth Lady Lisle, whose title he had taken. Elizabeth was only eight but she was an heiress and the move took her off the market till she grew up, giving Charles the use of her resources. As long as the marriage was unconsummated, Charles could free himself if he found ...”