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“... mode’, ‘déjeuner’ and ‘fallen lady’, terms which the Board School readers took in their stride, along with all those Biblical references. The narrator of The Sorrows of Satan, Geoffrey Tempest, is a self-pitying failed novelist who receives by the same post the news that he has been left ...”

“... Taylor herself wanted the part of Eliza Doolittle: reportedly, she said, ‘Get me My Fair Lady,’ to then-husband Eddie Fisher and agent Kurt Frings. I wonder if Liz knew that Audrey had turned down the part of Cleopatra in 1959. Audrey later said: ‘Oh come on, I’m not a movie star. Liz Taylor is a movie star.’ For a movie star, that’s a ...”

“... new novel felt bereaved: ‘I have derived more enjoyment from Anna Karenina and War and Peace,’ Lady Anna Winterbourne notes in her diary, ‘than from any other novels that I have read.’ The Map of Love suggests that Soueif herself may have Tolstoyan aspirations. Aspirations, not pretensions: there is an engaging modesty about her voice. Still, both her ...”

“... in 1976 with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, and Cooper’s now with himself and Lady Gaga, alias Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta – are remarkably faithful to their initial premise and themes. They are about fame, addiction, ambition and gender. The slayer of the king is the woman he has turned into a star, and she doesn’t want to slay ...”

“... might connote the same things, as might a look of perfect indifference like Edith Granger’s or Lady Dedlock’s. Any feminine surface effect was expected to be deceitful and treacherous, including even the mask of facial expression. The heroine of Roxana practises her deceit by assuming various costumes to further her adventurous career. But although ...”

“... of gold bullion. The second is by an admirer of Richardson’s novels, two generations later – Lady Louisa Stuart, whose Memoire of Frances Scott, Lady Douglas as she became, has been redeemed from the archives of the Border nobility, with the blessing of a former prime minister, Lord Home. The memoir appears to have ...”

“... all that remained, along with fragrant but sincere declarations from adoring disciples such as Lady Diana Cooper, who ‘loved Raymond hopelessly’ but could scarcely bear to write about him in her autobiography. Most of his admirers noted an ironic, sometimes a callous streak in his nature, which suggested that there could be more of interest to this ...”

“... hair just like the Jews’ but with strands of different colours, bleached by the sun. Would the lady like to buy some lace, the elder one asked, proffering a wicker basket full of coarse cotton edging lace. Then, in a gentle voice, she added: Were they going the right way into town? They’d come on the train, from Lincolnshire, had walked from the ...”

“... were exploited and undervalued. She was denied the privileges that supposedly brightened a lady’s life, and could not earn enough to allow for anything but the shabbiest gentility, or to guard against poverty when she grew too old to teach. Her predicament was earnestly debated in journals, advice books and manuals, educational ...”

“... Safe in his excavated gallery Christina Rossetti Lady Lassetter sits at her mirror; presented as a woodland frieze in May, her drapery is appliquéd with specimens of British botany. On the dresser’s marbled top a signed invitation can explain this flowered and zoomorphic frock, designed to be a favourite verse sartorialised ...”

“... Its appearance in 1955, however, started a train of thought in the mind of Crewe’s daughter Lady Cynthia Colville, who had been a lady-in-waiting to Queen Mary. She spoke to Owen Morshead, the royal librarian, and shortly afterwards Pope-Hennessy was surprised and annoyed to be asked to write the official ...”

“... Foolish, troublesome boy That hapless adventuring of yours Be very still Now can you hear it After Lady Murakami These sleeping used-car dealerships and blowing wrappers how many lost evenings the meagreness, the waste when suddenly the squeals of a transvestite about to gobble her cellphone * * * Just as I found myself in the dentist’s chair only yesterday ...”

“... Among the more amusing episodes in the biography is Strouse’s account of his romance with Lady Victoria Sackville in 1911, ‘an elaborate folie à deux’ in which each party ‘played out the flirtation while calmly pursuing more practical ends: ready cash on one side, authentic treasures on the other’. The romance began after Morgan purchased the ...”

“... is not under the illusion that Jane Austen’s oeuvre constitutes the Country Diary of a Regency Lady. Indeed, although she did not publish her first book until two years after the Regency was established, he repeatedly describes her as a Georgian. That may be justified if the implication is that her intellect was formed early in her life, but to establish ...”

“... it diplomatic not to do so. Therefore I used pseudonyms. Now I can say that a character I called Lady Kathleen V – was Edith Sitwell. She and I became friends eventually, but for a while I was in hot water. It began with my discovery of the diary of Jimmy Mason, known as the Hermit of Great Canfield, in the loft of my parents’ house. I was 16 at the ...”