“... British Isles. She eventually ran her quarry to earth in a cottage in North Yorkshire, home of a lady born to the not very Gallic surname of Parry-Jones, who had a treasured cache of family documents in a trunk that had come to rest there after a sojourn in Chile. Another great dossier of papers was discovered in a château in Périgord. Now, after ...”

“... girl falls for a creepy borderline paedophile. A disabled woman forces the arms of a dead old lady she has never met into silk funeral clothes, hears a crack, thinks she has probably broken one. Sansan, an ageing English teacher, ‘Miss Casablanca’ (because, romantically inclined, she teaches the film time after time), the daughter of a woman who sells ...”

“... a devoted family man. In that respect, he resembled Chekhov, and Chekhov’s masterpiece ‘The Lady with the Dog’ is in a sense in the background of the novel he hoped would be his own masterpiece. Of Mortal Love was published in 1936, the story of a casual love affair that turns into the real thing. Katherine Mansfield, who had deeply admired ...”

“... where the rector’s wife dumped him on the housekeeper or butler while she confabulated with the Lady Bountiful at the Great Hall. There was some basis to Jeeves country, and PG himself was like Jane Austen and many other people in having some grand though distant connections at one end and ordinary humble ones at the other. None of that seems to have ...”

“... the monstrousness of mass unemployment on starvation levels of relief. Somehow the spectacle of Lady Astor seeking to instruct penniless women in the art of making a nourishing soup out of hot water and a few carrots seemed even more offensive than plain indifference. Needless to say, such moments were fairly rare, since a good deal of Parliamentary ...”

“... equal political rights with men, feminists often regard it with scepticism. Yet both the career of Lady Diana Spencer, and Angela Levin’s study of the Princess’s father and stepmother – a classic of its kind – demonstrate that, at this level at least, female influence deserves analysis. Raine Spencer (recently transformed into a French Countess) was ...”

“... was still on when he returned at 5.45, indicating that Alison had not yet arrived home. From the lady in the downstairs flat there was more significant testimony still. Mrs Christina Wright, 73, was accustomed to watch the world from her window. She saw Alison come home that day. She gave an accurate description of what Alison had been wearing and told the ...”

“... when you have swayed from duty or from even your normal stroll beside me to bound away after some lady dog’. After Tintin’s first taste of passion, melancholy is not long establishing itself. The souring of his romance (‘You were delightful when innocent,’ says Clavdia, ‘but you’ve grown too solemn’) is accompanied by a profound political ...”

“... Jennifer Potter’s title takes place in the Arabian sands. It’s made in 1910 by Elinor Grace, a lady archaeologist intent on reaching the site of Mareb, thought to be associated with the Queen of Sheba. At first it looks as if Miss Grace is simply an intrepid and eccentric Englishwoman of the period, used to overawing inferior races by upper-class manners ...”

“... not simple. Years ago, when I was an undergraduate at Oxford, I was friendly with an eccentric old lady who one day gave me a book of her poems. She had not written them all, she explained. Some had a P at the end, and they had been written by her friend, a little fairy called Pipplepopple. I must not laugh, she added quickly, or Pipplepopple would be ...”

“... daisy flower’, a deft blend of elevated tone and low purport, where the lover dozes off and the lady slips away to find somebody more easily aroused. ‘Thus after her cold she caught a heat’: well might he sigh, well might he groan! ‘Hierusalem, my happy home’ is missing (Quiller-Couch dated his version 1601), and so is George Herbert, who was only ...”

“... where sat the cast of ghouls who ran the operation. Transmission times were decided by a dragon lady called Madame Awatiff, who had a voice that could cut through steel, wore saucer-size glasses magnifying her eyes and dressed in glamorous Fifties frippery. She responded best to flattery. The chief censor was the aptly-named Dr Saad, who derived a perverse ...”

“... in opportunity or pay did not worry her. She did, of course, get reviewers who wrote about ‘lady novelists’ as if ‘gentleman novelists’ were sexless, but these were mere flea bites. Naomi’s demand to express female experience in full, the approach which shocked publishers, reviewers and the respectable of Carradale, came from her emancipation ...”

“... Zahl for whom Rose works. The violent end of the affair leaves Rose as nurse-companion to the old lady – a caring role which she vainly sought when she first went to New York. Sustained by the indulgent company of the regulars at her Fulham pub, and having made her confession, she seems happier with herself, at last. It’s been a long haul, however, and ...”

“... eyes for a moment and say hello or goodbye’ – about Robert Graves in Majorca, and about an old lady singing: Forty-four and forty-five Am I dead or am 1 alive? I know but I don’t care. I know about despair. This intensely personal structure of image and reference ensures that Blackburn is always present in her book, but she is never assertive. St ...”