“... all the same. My best friend is a Copt.’ The day before we had given a lift to a wistful Coptic lady who had complained about discrimination. In my mood of dotty optimism and gratitude, I wanted Ahmed to be right. The Germans were asking him prying personal questions in English and discussing, in German, whether his hair was kinky or just curly. They seemed ...”

“... quality. Lodge is capable of writing a routine sentence – ‘In the meantime, the publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover gave a great impetus to the onset of the Permissive Society’ – and of dropping a critical issue just when it gets difficult. He says, for instance, that it’s ‘very important to decide whether Capote’s “Handcarved ...”

“... modern literature, the history of cinema, a case of homosexual-style blasphemy (which precedes the Lady Chatterley case), homosexual marriage blessed by autocephalic archbishops, and much else, including in a limited sense the life of Toomey’s creator. Here is, if not exactly God’s plenty, plenty of the Devil. At the age of 14 Toomey is seduced by George ...”

“... of location work is provided, indirectly, by a character in Theroux’s ‘Portrait of a Lady’: He thought: All travellers are like aging women, now homely beauties; the strange land flirts, then jilts and makes a fool of the stranger. There is less risk, at home, in making a jackass of yourself: you know the rules there. The observation is ...”

“... There was some clutching, a side-table was knocked over and a curl escaped from under the lady’s lace cap. The man hadn’t decided how to arrange his features before the situation was at an end. The lady maintained an air of gloomy consternation throughout. The girl in the outdoor pair is petite, and her ...”

“... making them verse-offerings and penning whimsical letters. He flirted with female admirers such as Lady Austen: But when a Poet takes the pen Far more alive than other men He feels a gentle tingling come Down to the finger and the thumb Deriv’d from Nature’s noblest part ... This was as near as his timidity ever allowed him to come to an erection. In ...”

“... whom you hardly know. You have strong feelings but they should be turned towards Our Lord and Our Lady.’ By the end of 1930 the Monday visits came to an end, but there were a few more meetings in church and even a few more drawings pressed into Véra’s unwilling hands. Véra promised that she would always pray for Gwen and Gwen retired to her shed, to ...”

“... life were May Lyttelton, whose early death had robbed him of an intended bride, and Mary Wyndham, Lady Elcho. May’s brother Alfred was appointed Colonial Secretary, and Mary’s brother George was brought into the Cabinet. Under Balfour, one of his ministers observed, ‘cabinets degenerated into cliquey conversations between “Arthur” and “Bob” and ...”

“... the Queen was the fixed point in a spinning world: everything going to the dogs but the great lady still smiling there with the corgis. It tells us a lot about Larkin, but it tells us even more about everyone’s need for a Great Goddess in some form or other. Quiet as the verse is it would be hard to imagine a more powerful advertisement for a royal ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... her introduction, ‘everything from bestiality to vibrators’. And, predictably, Erica Jong; and Lady Chatterley enjoying in Mellor’s iron bedstead ‘such a clean passion’; and Alexander Portnoy huddled behind a billboard, violating a piece of raw liver on his way to his barmitzvah lesson. On the evidence here, since women gained the freedom to write ...”

“... terminological inexactitude. Perhaps in time the fun lexicon of friendly fibs will be augmented by Lady Archer’s phrase inaccurate préis, describing her husband’s gift for telling a flowery autobiographical tale. See ...”

“... extent to which female literature flooded the marketplace caused monthly magazines to become so ‘lady-like’ that the American novelist and psychiatrist Silas Weir Mitchell felt ‘that naturally they will soon menstruate.’ Unable to procreate themselves, male writers were thus compelled to construct what Showalter calls ‘a new myth of creativity in ...”

“... off Boofy’s large pet badger, which would ‘snuffle round our knees in the drawing-room while Lady Arran served us tea’. Arran was responsible for the Badger Protection Act but his ardour cooled somewhat after his wife was attacked and almost killed by a group of badgers on a Scottish island. Arran announced in his newspaper column that he had decided ...”