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“... was the daughter of the Duke of Devonshire, a cousin of Lord David Cecil, et cetera, and became a lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret – the next best thing, perhaps, to Betjeman bagging a royal. His relationship with Cavendish was clearly one of the most important in his life, but the reader is left to infer from Hillier’s silences, or to guess from the ...”

“... out a name. In fact, I’m that young man with thick spectacles in the library. I flirt with a lady who wears them too and has an interest in creative writing. She’s all in white and her smile reveals a row of white teeth over which she has stuck cellophane like a child. I see the house where we’ll spend our remaining years: our faces redden in the ...”

“... like that accent. Please don’t come slouching near my bed again.’ So, real cool, I growled, ‘Lady, no way you’ll walk right over me.’ Dead on. I chucked her then. The Rosetta Stone We were real good and got to share a desk that smelt like the head’s Bible when I lifted up its lid and nicked a sharp HB from Eileen’s leather pouch, knowing that she ...”

“... birth simultaneously in the same two-roomed cabin). Zadel was a journalist who had hung out at Lady Wilde’s literary salon in London and was so close to Karl Marx’s daughter Eleanor that she signed letters to her ‘Mother’. She also appears to have been a medium, which talent she passed on to her second daughter-in-law (the ‘other woman’). When ...”

“... I did, when taking up Part of his Gown to fan himself with; and acting in Character of a prudish Lady, he said: ‘Well, I don’t know what to think; Women may be honest that do such things, but for my Part I never could bear to touch any Man’s Flesh – except my Husband’s, whom perhaps,’ says he, ‘she wish’d at the Devil.’ Swift’s fleshly ...”

“... pieces were gathered in a mini-collection of manuscript epigrams presented to his wife’s mother, Lady Rogers, which Harington lovingly bound together with a presentation copy of his Ariosto. In other poems in this collection he berated his mother-in-law for her scolding tongue and for her tendency to side with his wife in domestic disputes. We can only ...”

“... desire was not to be any kind of a celebrity. But the quiet suburb was not altogether safe. Lady Ottoline Morrell called, with the best intentions. Charlotte hid. Lady Ottoline left flowers and a message with the housekeeper. Charlotte wrote that she could only go to London by appointment. ...”

“... thought up an escape plan, and decided who would carry it out. The prince, dressed as Flora’s lady’s maid, would be shipped across the Minch to Skye, where he and Flora’s mother could shelter them. Did he consult Flora about his scheme, or give her a chance to back out? Apparently not. Like everyone around her, she knew that the prince was on the ...”

“... advice-givers had moved on to new fields; for example, offering a tip or two to a young lady newly ravaged by smallpox on how to hold on to her lover, with complementary advice to a gallant robbed of an eye and a leg in battle on how to retain his mistress’s affection. John Debrett’s flagship was the Peerage, which rode the generations like HMS ...”

“... and humour, and spreads inter-racial and inter-class tolerance. Her best friend is a school dinner lady married to a washing-machine repairman. The trouble is that it is difficult to emphasise the admirable nature of Lyris’s attitude without making her sound patronising. The rest of the cast is divided into goodies, baddies and what you might call lost ...”

“... here.’ Of course we understand her metaphorically, even if we wouldn’t put it past the bag-lady character she plays at various moments in this work to set up house inside some forgotten foyer. At one point she films a protest march, many young people carrying signs urgently calling out for change. Varda herself suddenly appears on the sidelines, a ...”

“... of high society romance that Kate Nickleby is obliged to read to the languid Mrs Witterly mentions Lady Flabella’s ‘mouchoir of finest cambric, edged with richest lace, and emblazoned at the four corners with the Flabella crest’, the ‘golden salver’ on which she receives a billet-doux and the ‘silken damask, the hue of Italy’s ...”

“... nor do I roll up my sleeves and just get on with it like a plucky little householder, mother and lady novelist probably ought to. Instead, I pack my laptop into its snappy black case, leave housekeeping money on the kitchen table, give what I hope is an affirmative hug to the daughter, commend her well-being to her father, and bugger off for a fortnight to a ...”

“... to Khartoum, and thence God only knows where, in search of the sources of the Nile.’ The future Lady Baker’s first home in Africa was a thatch and wood hut on the banks of the Atbara, where Florence laid out a piece of chintz and placed on it her brushes, her scent and a mirror. It is at this point that the extraordinariness of this little-known story ...”

“... beings came back into circulation. At the same time it produced the smooth, sleek silhouette of a lady, at once reinforcing existing ideas of class (women were visibly either ladies or not) and undermining them. The corset market itself was minutely graded, from expensive models adorned with rich laces and ribbons for the well-off, to plain ones made of stout ...”