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“... world in these letters of 1875-1883 – the years, roughly, from The American to The Portrait of a Lady – is already the world of such great late works as The Awkward Age, The Ambassadors and The Wings of the Dove. They are the letters of a consciously cosmopolitan observer of European manners, but their decorum, even while he is being gathered to the bosom ...”

“... became the inspiration for the first canzone of his new style: a love poetry that would praise his lady.Love says of her, ‘How can a mortal creaturebe equally as pure as she is fair?’Beholding her again, he now declaresthat in her God intended something new.In the Divine Comedy, written nearly twenty years later, a poet in Purgatory recognises Dante as ...”

“... of them great ladies, as he was fond of pointing out; they were potential patrons and benefactors: Lady Ottoline Morrell, Lady Cynthia Asquith, the Honourable Dorothy Brett, Catherine Carswell, Mary Cannan, Amy Lowell and, later, Mabel (Dodge Sterne) Luhan. He accepted their money (Frieda was not above writing begging ...”

“... us her pubes and long shadow of thigh The fresh linen smelled for all the world What did the lady on TV call it? An orchard of some kind       ******* Sure it’s just like staring out the window, Johnny sure but with fly eyes and sidewise       ******* When Pappy and Mahoney left for dinner and a show I was soooo a-LONE there in the ...”

“... a miracle of discretion, because the artist himself emerges nowhere from the stone. A worshipping lady emerges in bas-relief, and is largely concealed behind a bush. One could do worse than to recommend a similar modesty to artists at large, wherever they may temporarily hide. Verlaine did not suffer from it. He scowls down at us from the top of the most ...”

“... sort I know in South London, with people of similar income and unpredictable bias. One nice old lady is quietly Tory; her neighbour is quietly Labour – ‘I’ve never met Mr O’Brien but I knew his parents and his grandparents ...’ Next is a young housewife: ‘Oh yes, I’ll have a poster. Railways, you know, British Rail.’ Next is an Echo ...”

“... one at the Embassy with a Rolls Royce and his presence was appreciated. A handsome woman named Lady Jardine introduced him to the pleasures of physical sex and he spent one day a week in London to see Tilly dancing. Her contract with C.B. Cochran paid her a thousand pounds a week: she had the star part in Coward’s Wake Up and Dream, and shared the ...”

“... and for that matter the English Gothic mode, which sets them apart from a production like Lady Sophia Sternheim. For all these stories are noticeably underpopulated – a single suffering consciousness takes up the whole canvas, sometimes accompanied by a second, the dear and true or dear and forbidden friend. Whereas Sophie von La Roche’s novel is ...”

“... bravura brushwork and stereotypically aristocratic feminine charm offered by the portraitist’s Lady Agnew, Hughes declares: ‘there is a perfect match between the decorous luxuriance of Lady Agnew’s pose, the creaminess of the paint, and the shadow of tension on her face. For that, one can forgive a lot of the routine ...”

“... Lady Elizabeth Foster sits beneath a tree and avoids our gaze, lost, it seems, in thought. Behind her the Italian countryside is bathed in a warm autumnal light that sets off the delicate white and cream of her softly ruffled dress and fashionable Leghorn hat. She too is fair, her pink and white complexion carefully shaded from the afternoon sun ...”

“... ferocious: ‘In the van of battle, all is struck down before you. With your strength, my lady, teeth can crush flint.’ What does Enheduanna have in common with Hrotsvit, a noblewoman and poet writing lives of the saints in Latin in tenth-century Saxony? Hrotsvit hopes that ‘the Giver of my talent all the more be justly praised through me, the ...”

“... thoughts – and lots and lots of love and all good wishes, you dearest dear brave creature.’ Lady Londonderry was one of the hostesses whose parties added political zest to the London season. The biggest party was in Londonderry House at the Hyde Park Corner end of Park Lane, an 18th-century building enlarged by the Wyatts and possessed of the biggest ...”

“... the area had been staked out). This complicated phone trail eventually led to a man called Robert Lady. Lady was the CIA’s man in Milan, formally a US vice-consul, but well known to the police as a spy. He was so in love with Italy that he had decided to spend his imminent retirement in a luxurious villa near Turin. When ...”

“... of the first things we were taught was that Henry VI founded Eton, his “College Roiall of oure Lady Eton”, in the year 1440.’ So says Mark Dixon in An Eton Schoolboy’s Album. He may or may not have learned much history, but somewhere along the line Dixon, who left Eton in 1980, has learned how to write in an entertaining and elegant way. I find it ...”

“... like the other show written by Jenji Kohan, Weeds, which was also taken up with a pretty white lady who finds herself a making an indecent living out of selling illegal drugs. But OITNB wasn’t compelling enough to make me fire up the Apple TV thing to see the rest of the first series. Yet, the talk got louder: it wasn’t just witty and warm (always a ...”