“... some of which had been acquired decades earlier and were never intended to be seen. In 1938, Lady Edith Vane-Tempest-Stewart, marchioness of Londonderry, caused a stir when she appeared at a fashion show with a dragon tattoo, which she’d had done in Japan in 1904, visible through her sheer stockings.By this time, the tattoo artist’s job had been made ...”

“... thanking her for what he terms her amazing insights into Moby-Dick. He then remarks; ‘My dear Lady, I shall not again send you a bowl of salt water. The next chalice I commend will be a rural bowl of milk.’ Clearly, ‘a rural bowl of milk’ is expected to suit the tastes of the general public, though it may be significant that in the novel Pierre’s ...”

“... an effigy of Dundas was carried into George Square and set alight outside the house of his mother, Lady Arniston. Despite the intervention of troops, who were strongly resisted by the crowd, windows were broken in her house and in that of Robert Dundas, the lord advocate and Henry’s nephew. One rioter was shot by the soldiers, several injured. The crowd ...”

“... of peace, kitted out with gardens, vegetable plots, craft centres and all unsullied by men. ‘A Lady of Letters’ ends in a women’s prison, with Miss Ruddock saying: ‘I’m so … happy.’ In ‘Nights in the Gardens of Spain’ two characters find love in a prison garden. Now at the end of Allelujah! (and slightly to my surprise) there comes another ...”

“... had invaded his privacy, not he theirs. His subsequent films, Rebecca, Pride and Prejudice and Lady Hamilton, show him muffling his sexuality in withdrawn diffidence, with that effect of coquetry which led some contemporaries to describe him as flirtatious. But knowledge of his power is clearly present in the scenes where he woos Katherine of France in ...”

“... cheap hotels and climactically the shells of aphrodisiac oysters, are not going to do for a social lady – or rather, to see it another way, are too likely to do for a social lady. And the ‘overwhelming question’ leads to the wrong kind of altar. Just as America and Europe seem here to intertwine topographically, so the ...”

“... dramas’. Dr Crippen, a bespectacled, respectable man, who lived in North London, killed the lady, cut her up and buried her in the coal bunker. He then took up with his lover, a young thing called Ethel le Neve. Like many murders before and since, the one carried out by Dr Crippen came to be seen as a reflection on and of its time. All manner of local ...”

“... 703. I like the number – I am superstitious about them – for the zero in the middle is like a lady flanked by two gentlemen, one older and one younger.’ Dickens, and more acutely Gogol, may have influenced Roth, but probably the strongest impression was made by Viennese journalism, in particular the practice and perfection of the feuilleton, or short ...”

“... one reveals different things about oneself to different people. Even if one never lies, as a lady once said to me, one seldom tells the whole truth. And their own readings of his character, not surprisingly, in the light of their diverse backgrounds, viewpoints and talents, differ. Friends see friends as part of their own lives. Part of how we now see ...”

“... against Helen Gahagan Douglas, the wife of Melvin Douglas, who had been smeared as ‘the Pink Lady’). But he does mention Kennedy’s unfortunate excursions into foreign affairs when he was a member of Congress: for instance, he joined in the general caterwauling about Truman having lost China and made a number of insensitive attacks on ...”

“... the emotional pleas and purposes the poet wants to exhibit. The same thing happens even in ‘Lady Lazarus’ and ‘Daddy’, where the skill of the art-work has become more durable than what it was supposed to be saying. Natural in a sense, therefore, that the new generation should detect what survives and identify with it. Sylvia Plath’s suicide and ...”

“... to some people about Proust, Cavafy, Caravaggio and Mozart; to others, about the Platters, The Lady Vanishes, St Elsewhere and Frazier. Taste can be criticised as surely as character can, but not every difference in character manifests a defect. Universal agreement on beauty would bring with it the desolation of uniformity, not the triumph of truth. Beauty ...”

“... numerous Harlem parties: ‘What a crowd! All classes and colours met face to face ... And yes, Lady Nancy Cunard was there all in black (she would) with 12 of her grand bracelets.’ Cunard made a collection of black writing, including some of the major names of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston among them, and published it under the title ...”

“... In St Jude’s Church, Hampstead Garden Suburb, designed by Lutyens and opened in 1911, the Lady Chapel enshrines a pantheon of women; in the west dome, St Joan has pride of place over an English heaven populated by a mixed bunch of writers, philanthropists and reformers – Cavell is there, and so are Queens Victoria and Alexandra, Elizabeth Barrett ...”

“... succession (The Big Sleep in 1939, Farewell, My Lovely in 1940, The High Window in 1942 and The Lady in the Lake in 1943), there was a gap of six years before The Little Sister appeared in 1949, reflecting Chandler’s other career as a screenwriter (he wrote The Blue Dahlia and shared credit for the adaptations of Strangers on a Train and Double ...”