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“... in Newgate and Holloway, combined with a rackety way of life, had left unravaged the face of Mrs Georgina Weldon, whose radiant likeness appeared on the London buses in the year of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee. An accompanying legend ran: ‘I am 50 today, but thanks to Pears Soap my complexion is only 17.’ London’s favourite jailbird and troublemaker had ...”

“... have tended to assume that the transformation which occurred in the 1990s was self-imposed. But as Georgina Born makes clear in her definitive analysis of the John Birt and Greg Dyke eras, the consistent impetus came from government. It’s no surprise that Margaret Thatcher wanted to take on the BBC – if anything, the surprise is how long it took ...”

“... Versions of the future (1). The year is 2021, human life is dying out. The last human being was born in 1996, and has just been killed outside Buenos Aires in a pub brawl. Infertility is world-wide, but we are not concerned with its effects in North or South America, Africa or India, or anywhere but Britain, where the apparently benevolent authority of the Council is ruled or guided by the Warden, Xan Lypiatt ...”

“... the one frog we dwell upon. But she was also, and this was central to her whole existence, twice-born. At the age of about thirteen she became, in company with her mother and sister, a fervent High Anglican. The keynote which Pusey and Keblehad set was self-sacrifice. To find enough to sacrifice and to suffer for, ‘not to keep back or count or ...”

“... to the rather more real Garrick. The marriage took place on 2 April 1836 and the first child was born on 6 January the following year. Nine months almost to the day. From then on Twelfth Night would always be an occasion for rumbustious family celebrations and elaborate theatricals of which Dickens was both creator and main performer. Over the next 15 years ...”

“... well, it seemed, with the memory of her angelic sister Mary, who had died unexpectedly at 17. Georgina, another Hogarth sister, lived with the family, and kept the children in order without adding to their number. Georgina’s capable presence exacerbated Dickens’s sense of Catherine’s shortcomings and he began to ...”

“... are more than a thousand books about Winston Churchill, but this is the first about his cook, Georgina Landemare. Since it may well also be the last, it’s fortunate that she has fallen into the sympathetic hands of Annie Gray. Gray is a food historian and she sets Landemare’s long life in the context of changes in diet and eating habits over nearly a ...”

“... case of obsession, pathos and absurdity. Its very pretension produces its own sort of humour. Born in 1913, she was a privileged girl, from a rich and cultured Ottawa family, and in girlhood a great striver and succeeder, as Sylvia Plath was to be. To this ominous comparison it must be added that Elizabeth is apt to fatigue the reader by her normality, to ...”

“... slender. She habitually refers to characters such as ‘honest Joe Crumb’ (John Crumb), ‘Georgina Longestaffe’ (Georgiana Longestaffe) and ‘Father Barnham’ (Father Barham). This could be put down to dyslexia or forgetful proof-reading. But one could make no such excuse for the extraordinary misconception of Roger Carbury, the character Trollope ...”

“... after the Black September fighting of 1970. Miss Universe 1971 was a Lebanese Christian ingenue, Georgina Rizk, who brought some bikini glamour to progressive politics by marrying Ali Hassan Salameh, the PLO’s security chief. Throw in the spies and journalists swapping rumours at the St George Hotel bar (Kim Philby had been a regular), and you had a city ...”

“... mistresses (or one mistress and morganatic wife, as Clarke prefers to classify them). Wilkie was born the eldest son of William Collins, a successful painter principally of landscapes. Collins senior was an odd mixture: High Church and yet bohemian in his way of life. The young Wilkie spent much of his early childhood being dragged around Italy and had the ...”

“... widely suspected that another woman was involved. Some assumed it was Dickens’s sister-in-law, Georgina Hogarth. This lady suffered the indignity of a virginity test, to disprove what would have been incest as well as adultery. Those closer to Dickens knew better. ‘No such thing – it’s with an actress,’ Thackeray told his mother, adding: ‘It’s ...”

“... in the sense of not being ordinary. They were almost always women. ‘My ears pricked up when Georgina Hammick told me she had had an excellent English teacher at Beaufront called Mr Butts,’ Maxtone Graham notes. ‘It turned out it was not Mr Butts but Miss De Butts.’ Hatherop Castle was headed by a Mrs Fyfe:‘Was there a Mr Fyfe?’‘Yes there ...”

“... in Hauts-de-Seine, seems likely to find a place in Calvados. The Minister for Social Affairs, Georgina Dufoix, has been parachuted into Gard – but is being fiercely resisted by the local party. The Minister for Foreign Trade, Edith Cresson, is having a similarly difficult time after being parachuted into Vienne. The Minister for the ...”