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“... cuirassier’. He also acquired ‘a relique of greater moral interest’ which was a gift from a lady ‘whose father had found it upon the field of battle. It is a manuscript collection of French songs, bearing stains of clay and blood, which probably indicate the fate of the proprietor.’ Scott’s combination of romantic excitement and morbid curiosity ...”

“... might need to earn her own living. Teaching was the only realistic option if she was to remain a lady. For Annie, this was more than an expedience. Charitable work among poor children, another task imposed by her gender and class, persuaded her that she had found a vocation. Those who knew her as a self-effacing girl would have been astonished to learn that ...”

“... oneself taking sides against Jem’s presumption of her family’s specialness. The sweet-shop lady’s irritation, for instance, on board the boat to Canada, is surely reasonable enough? In the souvenir and sweetie shop Harriet starts furiously rearranging the display of sweet rolls and little packets and boxes and so on and the shop woman glares at ...”

“... know either when she begins writing.) In 2013 she won the White Review Short Story Prize with ‘Lady of the House’: the monologue of a young woman who stares from the window of her lover’s home and imagines a monster troubling the stretch of water below. Like Bennett, the narrator of these stories lives in the west of Ireland, in a rented cottage from ...”

“... that too).’ He was, however, open to the idea that it might be a temporary state of mind. ‘A lady of seventy wrote to me about the poem “When I was fifty I felt as you do; now I don’t”. So perhaps we can comfort ourselves with the thought that when death is really near, it won’t worry us. We shall become as thick-skinned as everyone else.’ He ...”

“... that about right.‘We’ve always been the greatest friends’ – that is the kind of thing the lady says about her dentist or accountant, or a woman she’s known for years and years and doesn’t trust an inch. Friendship, like patriotism, is one of those things that has gone off the scale of expression. E. M. Forster managed to combine both in the ...”

“... by the eccentric, neurotic Margery Kempe: ‘hir mende was raveschyd in-to beholdyng of owr Lady offeryng hyr blisful Sone owre Savyour to the preyst Simeon in the Tempyl, as verily to hir gostly undirstondyng as [if] sche had ben ther in hir bodily presens.’ The same scene was enacted in the late medieval religious plays, which Duffy claims had a ...”

“... by his sending ‘a muff of gardenias’ to his niece’s coming-out ball. Her parents, Lord and Lady Glenconner, launched their daughter with Austerity-busting splendour. A marquee, a New Look dress from Dior, a pillar of dry ice and she was ‘out’. Out into what is the question that occupies the rest of the book. What is a well-connected, semi-educated ...”

“... These essays have something in common with Edith Holden’s The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady (now available in Japanese and shortly on jigsaw puzzles), which has been on the best-seller list for nearly three years and has sold over a million and a half copies: it has some pretty pictures of cowslips and some less appealing portraits of fat, rather ...”

“... addition, she had been gay, with those big old teeth, long before such time as being gay and First Lady was even conceptual. She, Alison, could not hope to compete in the category of those ladies. Not yet, anyway! A lot of what’s appealing about Saunders is at loose here: his easy way with grandly deployed casual diction, the humour wrung from malapropism ...”

“... of money); he speaks of adoring the ‘soulful blue eyes’ and kissing the ‘velvet’ hand of Lady Garvagh (who was married to a cousin of the prime minister, George Canning), of peeping beneath the scanty rags of a comely Irish harvester, and playing charades with teenage girls in the house of Lady Morgan in ...”

“... sneering at labradors & joggers disaffected deer . . . I have no news. I am boring old lady. Have to stop myself from talking to grocery clerks about my grandchildren or my cat. * One of my classes gave me a fabulous gift. It is a cup, with Denver skyline & a moon – When you pour hot coffee in it the pope appears in the sky! So dear heart – my ...”

“... of celebrity biographies. Gossip, of course, is important, but Antonia Fraser is too much of a lady to gossip, rather than simply allow famous names to flutter gracefully onto each page. And although I quite see that loved ones, relatives, friends want to share memories, does it really matter to the majority of us who do not know them, how much Pinter and ...”

“... voyage. Later on, wondering why they’d had no premonition of disaster, people remembered one old lady who, fearing a calamity, had gone to bed each night in her clothes. But old ladies are like that and no one paid any attention. Long before it was launched the idea had somehow got about that the Titanic was unsinkable – and that one way or another was ...”

“... don’t know that Mrs Horrocks quite means this, officer. What you said to me on the phone, young lady, was ...’ I said: ‘Henry. You weren’t there.’ The policeman winks and says: ‘Now then, we don’t want another shooting match do we?’ I mean at first Henry didn’t even know who they were. He said: ‘Not the chow?’ I said: ‘No. That’s the ...”