“... 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 ...”

“... an Oxford college. A more plausible scene would have him growling greetings to the black cleaning lady at a quarter to six in the morning of a dreary January, as he comes in to finish an article about the night soil trade in 18th-century London, in an academic institution that is only just managing to contain him. And he it. Porter’s industry has taken him ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... story is of how, in December 1938, a biographer of George Eliot received a letter from an old lady of 85, Ethel Welsh, née Lewes, confidently asserting that she was the daughter of George Henry Lewes by his wife Agnes, and that any suggestion that her mother had behaved improperly was false: ‘My Mother was a most perfect Mother.’ Ethel had also loved ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... zealotry rule – a kind of tenth-reich Thatcherism. The heroine of Against a Dark Background, Lady Sharrow (‘I’m a fucking aristo, creep,’ she chides one underling who forgets her title), has been orphaned by Huhsz assassins. The Huhsz is a mixture of cult, multinational company, and clan, whose motives for wanting to go to any lengths to destroy ...”

“... fifty thousand came to pay tribute in the hall of the state Legislative Assembly. The first was a lady of 84, but most were young. Girls wrote his name across their foreheads and painted the colours of Brazil on their cheeks. President Franco, falling in the opinion polls five months before a presidential election and perhaps alarmed at the division that’s ...”

“... at the funeral service ‘his side-whiskers and the hair on his head were carefully cut off by his lady admirers’ – but it was finally achieved by Dostoevsky, in his famous speech at the ceremonies that accompanied the unveiling of the Pushkin statue in Moscow in 1880. Dostoevsky hijacked the poet for his own ideological ends. Unique among all the poets of ...”

“... like that accent. Please don’t come slouching near my bed again.’ So, real cool, I growled ‘Lady, no way you’ll walk right over me.’ Dead on. I chucked her then.                  ‘Waftage: An Irregular Ode’ The language flows as simply as blood from a wound, but how multifarious it is, borrowed and pieced together, now like a ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... the great liner Queen Mary, which was almost as much a ‘constancy’ in the national life as the lady after whom the vessel was named: indeed, for years this majestic symbol of Britain’s recovery upstaged the Queen in the headlines. Anne Edwards makes no claim to have unearthed new sources. Matriarch is simply a refresher course in recent royal ...”

“... heightened her powers of observation. In English country society, ‘the men talk together; the lady of the house may be addressed once in a way as a duty – but they had rather talk together ... they have no notion that a lady’s conversation is better than a man’s.’ She was not used to such attitudes: ‘For some ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”