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“... In 2006 the Wall Street Journal declared Qiu Xiaolong’s first novel, Death of a Red Heroine (2000), one of the top five ‘political novels’ of all time for its indictment of Communism. Many of the crimes in his books have their roots in the repression of the past, but Qiu’s series about Chief Inspector Chen Cao – after Death of a Red Heroine came A Loyal Character Dancer (2002), When Red Is Black (2004), A Case of Two Cities (2006) and now Red Mandarin Dress – is actually less concerned with politics than with the contrast between victims and perpetrators ...”

“... vicious in their methods, even by the high standards of the fraternity. Why there? Why then? Caroline Fraser, who grew up both there (on Mercer Island, just outside Seattle) and then, and has been probing at her country’s soft spots ever since (including in her Pulitzer-winning book about Laura Ingalls Wilder, Prairie Fires), is well placed to ...”

“... relatives, the Little House books were the only ones that anyone could remember her having liked. Caroline Fraser, who edited the books for the Library of America, points to an essay in National Affairs by Meghan Clyne, a former Bush speechwriter, which argues that ‘much as the Tea Party renewed Americans’ appreciation of the freedoms that are our ...”

“... over the Border is to be welcomed. The House of Stuart does not quite have the authority of Caroline Bingham’s excellent The Stewart Kingdom of Scotland 1371-1603, published in 1974, but its range is wider. Caroline Bingham’s The Kings and Queens of Scotland takes the story down to ‘the Kings across the ...”

“... a beginning, with apologies to Sarah Waters and Michel Faber (and a nod to George MacDonald Fraser): London, 1860. November. A pea-souper billowing up from the flotsam bobbing in the Thames. The gas lamps already blearing. Good things of day begin to drowse. The rookeries are emptying, and their birds of prey making wing to the West ...”

“... last night with Malcolm and Kitty. We took with us our enterprising and appealing grandson Benjie Fraser, aged 22, and his enchanting girlfriend, still at St Paul’s. She is the daughter of Caroline (née Blackwood) by her second husband, a Polish musician. Caroline was married earlier ...”

“... to hidden fires. Though Gordon duly acknowledges 20th-century biographies by Gérin and Rebecca Fraser, among others, she nonetheless contends that the protective design of Gaskell’s Life still obscures our vision of the novelist. Of course, Gaskell did set out to vindicate her friend as well as to commemorate her, and she evidently constructed the Life ...”

“... Or Patricia Köster ‘Koster’? Or Margarette Smith ‘Margaret’? Or Antonia Fraser ‘Frazer’? Above all, what credence can one attach to a student of the subject who lists Charlotte Charke as ‘Clarke’, thus defacing one of the most interesting names in the entire history – and one finely turned to fictional ends in Maureen ...”

“... London family: her father (whose sister, Elizabeth, became Lady Longford; Antonia Fraser is Harman’s cousin) was a doctor and her mother had qualified as a barrister, though she gave up work when she had children. Their four daughters were to be educated but marriageable; not too submissive or too assertive; and to be sure to avoid the fate ...”