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“... Hubert Howard and the many others whose shocking stories are told in The Windrush Betrayal by Amelia Gentleman, the journalist whose investigations led to the uncovering of the scandal, came in on their parents’ British passports: from the moment of emancipation in 1834, freed men and women became British subjects. But long before the raft of ...”

“... and Margaret Forster’s sprightly ‘autobiography’, Thackeray: Memoirs of a Victorian Gentleman (1978). (Rather meanly, Peters leaves both competitors out of her ‘Select Bibliography’.) All three are, self-confessedly, dwarfed by the late Gordon Ray’s authoritative two-volume biography, Thackeray, The Uses of Adversity (1955) and ...”

“... would be a better customer if Vauxhall offered more nightingales and fewer strumpets. A Virginian gentleman called William Byrd was matter of fact about the amenities in June 1718: We went to Spring Gardens where we picked up two women and carried them into the arbour and ate some cold veal and about 10 o’clock we carried them to the bagnio, where we ...”

“... Gold Rush who cut himself off from the primacy of his Western experience when he turned English gentleman – is convincingly undermined by this book. He kept writing stories set in the Wild West, but they were far from the hack work so derided by contemporary ‘Westerners’ like Mark Twain. In England, he wrote of the West ‘even more dryly and ...”

“... Butler (Clark Gable) is Scarlett’s male counterpart, just as devious, just as heated. He’s no gentleman, but then she’s no lady. Beguiled by Ashley, dismissive of sexual desire and apparently hostile to the idea of motherhood, Scarlett resists him. These passions play out through the apocalypse of the American Civil War, a conflict that calls on all ...”

“... he is writing. When, therefore, in Chapter Two of Vanity Fair, an officer of the Life Guards calls Amelia ‘a dem fine gal, egad!’ is Thackeray recalling the military speech and accent of 1813, or reflecting that of 1847? Phillipps assumes – wrongly, I think – that this is current Victorian usage because Thackeray was a Victorian. Surtees’s love of ...”

“... Phillips walked over to Newgate and asked for Taylor at the Felon’s Gate. He was told that ‘Gentleman Taylor’ was staying at Mr Kirby’s, and there Phillips found him. Taylor was amazed and relieved to hear that Phillips had not been subpoenaed by the defence to appear at Thelwall’s trial. But if you are subpoenaed, he added, please tell the court ...”