“... and a cause of terrible suffering. It preoccupied physicians and the columnists of the Lady’s Magazine in equal proportions.Ray and Hackman, apparently bound together and torn apart by intense and, in Hackman’s case, ultimately ungovernable passion, were a fascinating instance. Both were seen, by many people, as victims: Ray of her ...”

“... saintly mask made to fit his worldly face, by changing his name to George Heaven, and courting his lady all over again. When eventually unmasked, he finds that years of looking and behaving as a saint have transformed illusion into reality. ‘He looked into her eyes and saw in them the reflection of his own ...”

“... about the making of the notorious and hugely profitable pornographic exploration of the lady with the lively larynx. MacKinnon has spent a good portion of her career as a scholar and litigator trying to develop legal and other sanctions against pornography – including having helped Deep Throat star Linda Boreman (Linda Lovelace was a nom de ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... of her front teeth fell out into the snow in front of a firehouse. A fireman came out and said, “Lady can I help you?” “Oh, my pearl,” she said. “I dropped my pearl.”’Throughout her brief, blazing career, Darling worked hard to appear superficial. Her topics of conversation were lipstick, hair, clothes, stockings, stars, men: light, breezy salon ...”

“... daughters, feared for their internal organs. ‘She used to tell us a dreadful moral tale about a lady who laced herself so hard that she cut her liver right in half.’Structural transformations of the figure weren’t limited to the upper half of the body. In the early 18th century there was a vogue for gigantic skirts, which had to be supported by ...”

“... he becomes ‘a modern African man’. She says that his girlfriend, Nko, is ‘a modern African lady, but you are still lagging – oh, so far, far behind!’ Miss Bulewao’s next lesson begins: ‘Today we shall explore the possibility of working on biographical details, to make them look fictitious. Ete Kamba, you have to start ...’ But Ete is not ...”

“... My father crossed himself and laid his pink carnations in Alyosha’s stone arms. The little lady in the headscarf took her tools out of the wheelbarrow and set to work. She scrubbed the marble plinth until we could see our reflections in it, then the marble skirting around the tomb itself. Then she scratched away at the vines and the ivy which were ...”

“... in England, that Renaissance backwater, men and women – Robert Wakefield, William Tyndale and Lady Jane Grey – made the effort; and the man whose trail-blazing translation of the New Testament from its original Greek had paved the way for the Reformation ought logically to have done the same with me Old Testament. But Erasmus had a good Catholic’s ...”

“... like of this old house – it will tumble about our ears I reckon, one day or another, and yet my lady is always repairing it.’ The inheritance and running of the Hall are disputed by corrupt clergy, tricky lawyers, upper and lower servants representing capitalist and lower-class interests, and a gang of criminals hiding in the cellars. Smith’s plot ...”

“... what they were not like. In page after page Edith Thompson examined the personalities of Lady Sarah Ides, Cesare Carelli or the Princess Mancelli with the ferocious attention of a Dallas fan. ‘About Dolores darlint – I dont agree with you at all about her not liking her husband’; ‘I didnt like Theo myself’; ‘I like Clarie – she is so ...”

“... the National Trust. I was apprehensive of what I might find inside. Diary of an Edwardian Country Lady beer mats? A glass cover over the ‘genuine’ sawdust sweepings? But conversation in the massively intimate snugs was anything but hushed, and the punters (lurkers and late-risers every one) standing around in the polychromatic magnificence of the tiled ...”

“... it. (As if I could!) The comic element is of course recognised. Toynbee was delighted to hear a lady interviewed on TV say: ‘You’ve got to believe in something. And I believe in the non-animal fat diet.’ Insatiably religious persons who have caught the virus late in life have something in common, but may differ strongly in ...”