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“... Sir Edward Cassel, Edward VII’s crony and investment tipster; the man who, when asked by a lady what he thought of her lapis lazuli necklace, reputedly said: ‘Very pretty stuff. I’ve got a room made of it.’ Thorold is never too occupied with population shifts and infillings to overlook the foibles of the times. He reminds us of the etiquette of ...”

“... mistress. The late Colonel Ingham, the greatest collector of Boswelliana, used to say that Lady Talbot of Malahide threw them on the fire in 1927 because they were too disgusting, but that he had read them first: they disclosed that Thérèse told Boswell he was a rotten, inconsiderate lover and, much to his discomfort, tried to teach him better ...”

“... shacks. A young girl picking flowers stumbles on the body of a lynched man. An old black lady wanders into a segregated church and is bustled away by the congregation, who project onto her dazed, innocent face all their own mean and multiple fears. Poor blacks move North, become Muslims, and return as tourists to their past; others stay at home and ...”

“... have plenty of soap, but the British Council didn’t tell us to bring water,’ I remark to a lady from Poznan. ‘Ah, Poland will always surprise you,’ she replies with a smile. ‘By the way,’ I say, ‘would you like some soap?’ The moment seems opportune, though the offer, when I hear myself saying it, lacks finesse. She accepts with charming ...”

“... himself of the body of an atheistic scientist, Weston, in order to prosecute his temptation of the Lady. Happily, Ransom manages to bash in the face of this equivocal being with a stone and hurl him into a lake of fire. So all is well on Perelandra. Even when handling a theme as momentous as this, it seems, Lewis can rely predominantly upon his visual ...”

“... debated ever since his old admirers on the American Left took offence at the hit musical of 1941, Lady in the Dark. Recently, the argument has developed some entertaining new twists: while certain sections of the Left are finding hitherto unsuspected merit in the Weill who was once stigmatised as ‘commercial’, refugees from the crumbling fortresses of ...”

“... her. (She was memorably fierce in reviewing Susan Brownmiller’s book on rape: ‘She is not a lady and she is a very bad writer.’) Her relationship with Lowell, and with his work and her own, embodies something paradoxical in that mid-century moment, for a certain kind of intellectual woman. On the one hand, she expresses contempt for the conventions of ...”

“... at the moment of correct focus (this is what is the most amusing to calculate) … She is the lady in all her get-up, very fashionable, very ridiculous … or very pretty, who knows? Far off, among the walkers, she stands out like a golden pheasant in a henhouse. She approaches … I’m shy, trembling a little. Twenty metres … ten metres … eight ...”

“... from principals. Giles Broadway (executed with Fitzpatrick) had confessed to a sexual assault on Lady Castlehaven, but had claimed that penetration had never taken place because he had ejaculated prematurely. Castlehaven was convicted because of his wife’s deposition (although wives could not normally testify against their husbands), despite the fact that ...”

“... respectable reviews, and he was taken up by critics like Edmund Gosse, literary hostesses like Lady St Helier, and grandes dames like Violet Hunt, a former mistress of H.G. Wells and Ford Madox Ford. He now established himself as a prolific writer of novels, short stories and plays, and perfected his public persona: polite but cynical, with a streak of ...”

“... duty. Austen’s own attitude to fame was equivocal. Her books were published anonymously (by ‘a Lady’ or by ‘the author of …’) and she was determined to keep her identity hidden, if not from London circles (her brother Henry couldn’t resist boasting), then at least from the circles she moved in. Propriety was a factor, of course, but she doesn’t ...”

“... there by his extremely wealthy and successful cousin Simon Taylor. Taylor, according to Lady Nugent, the governor’s wife, ‘had a numerous family, some almost on every one of his estates’. Tailyour began a relationship with an enslaved woman, Polly, born Mary Graham, who was described as ‘mulatto’ on the baptismal certificates of her and ...”

“... of the Arthurian legend – such as the Holy Grail, and Bedivere’s return of Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake – are derived from the sagas of the Narts, another people dwelling far away in the Caucasus mountains. Could such stories have been imported by the Alans, a tribe which seems to turn up everywhere on the wilder shores of speculation? There ...”

“... 16th-century paper and in Medea’s hand, arranging a tryst: ‘Look out, in the left aisle, for a lady wearing a black mantle, and holding a rose.’ Boundaries between fantasy and fact seem to dissolve, as the magnetism of the past frustrates the aspirations of the present. The narrators of these stories have their own projects – they are ...”

“... Surely. Please forgive me. Whither Colette? With her catsin that secluded garden, the great lady, no longer young (his age) suffering stillthrough those overmastering bouts of passion … – The cats will spring sideways at themoths when by ten the air is blue as a morning glory. – After dinner, Sidonie-Gabrielle wrote – I mustn’t forget to ...”