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“... of its precocious 12-year-old narrator, Simons Manigault. Simons is the only son of a literary lady who wants him to become a writer (hence the elaborate diction and distended vocabulary – she’s had him reading Faulkner), and his narrative is presented as an ‘assignment’ he is writing for her. Near the beginning of the novel, he describes falling ...”

“... were imperfectly suited. Her Frenchness was a snag. ‘Sir Walter lived as happily with his lady as might be supposed capable for one whose tastes and habits were so essentially dissimilar.’ A dodgy sentence, but one that rings true. Lady Scott appears in a better light when Hogg, in his parlour mode of loveable ...”

“... as opinion surveys have shown, Thatcherism never took hold of the British people even when the lady herself was in power. If anything, indeed, public opinion moved to the left during the Thatcher era. Lady Thatcher’s unique feat of winning three general elections in a row was thus more the result of a divided ...”

“... called fin’amor, was firmly extramarital. A knight or cleric professed to adore an unavailable lady, offering her the ‘service’ of songs sung in her honour, tournaments fought under her colours and obedience to her every whim. In return she might deign to reward him with a tender glance, a smile, a kiss, or even – provided that secrecy could be ...”

“... Numbers, Deuteronomy), posits an original and originating ‘master’ who is in fact female: a lady of the court of King Rehoboam, slack-wristed son and heir of Solomon. And why not? Dealing with an era so distant and ill-documented as ancient Israel, we can find no firm evidence either for or against that supposition. If all the same we find it ...”

“... his long list of illustrious acknowledgments (again, I’ve only seen an advance proof) includes Lady Eccles and Anthony and Lady Violet Powell. Murray began the book when he was 16, still at Eton, and finished it a week before starting at Oxford. (Much of the work was done while teaching at a remote prep school in ...”

“... she said to the presenters. The programme nets an audience of 11.9 million people, so as the lady approached the front of the stage – a lady undeniably frumpy, gauche, and dowdy – she was already in the process of achieving her dream. The judges were smirking, the audience was baying for blood, and everybody was ...”

“... hand in Powys’s rise to fame, having recommended him to David Garnett, another fantasist, whose Lady into Fox had been a great success in 1922. There seems to have been a market in those years for a peculiarly English brand of fantasy, but any imputation of parochialism must fail: Garnett was a man of wide interests, who wrote poems in French as well as ...”

“... flight Of stairs which lead to the door of her fine house, The other on the third, the very old lady Stands, staring dead ahead, clutching the railings. At one point in my tortuous, interrupted walk Linking up all the second-hand bookshops I know of In this city which I visit too rarely, I pass by her, guiltily, without speaking. 2. Where a few paths ...”

“... bold your cry of ‘Checkmate, Shah maat!’ King Dad will rise again, his crown unspilled, his lady hard-faced at his side. You mustn’t think I’m gloating, now shiver when you hear the whispering of my skirts along the aisles where those dumb beasts, the backs of your heads, graze in their sensual doze. I’m miles from the queening square. Although no ...”

“... Scraped, slid off, like his vest was made of mithril. Lothlorien, Gonvilnd Keys. A gift from the Lady, or Arron Banks. Barings Bank. The plunderous karats of Antwerpus Loup. The bayonet tip wunt bite in the thick-seamed ephod, its armour of urin and bummin. Deep bruzing, dribling facets. Sum wailing: Paedo/haemo-philiac sadness. Bayonet tip at ...”

“... quotations. It draws not only on family documents, but on the writings of Macaulay, Emily Eden, Lady Canning, Bishop Heber, Kipling, Diana Cooper and Forster; and it comments, sometimes with disfavour, on films like Gandhi, The Far Pavilions and The Jewel in the Crown. If a book on this scale had been written by an American it would have carried ...”

“... Waldorf wrote to the Times to defend the Cliveden house parties and to insist that he and ‘Lady Astor’ were ‘no more fascists’ than communists: ‘To link our weekends with any particular clique is as absurd as is the allegation that those of us who desire to establish better relations with Germany or Italy are pro-Nazis or pro-Fascists.’ Like ...”

“... women gathered and the screaming started? Probably not. They planned on twisting me Into a little lady if it killed them But definitely would not want to be Anything but the smallest feet in town. Nowadays I think of those girls in China Who ran and pounced and almost flew until The day they never pounced or ran again. Their fledgling feet did not grow into ...”

“... existed between these people – were they subtle and melancholy as Sei Shonagon, witty as Lady Murasaki – did their houses have corridors or blinds, what did they whisper behind? Did they go from place to place slowly, as the Japanese courtiers did, composing in the endless lurching of the oxcart a tender thought, a poem to present on arrival at the ...”