“... on, we find that Section 2340A might need to be violated anyway in conditions of ‘necessity or self-defence’: all of this to argue against the possibility of criminal liability on the part of US interrogators. Guantanamo protocols begin with polite questioning – ‘the detainee should be provided a chair and the environment should be generally ...”

“... The heroes of Albert Camus’s books can be quite annoying: surly, self-dramatising Hamlets who like to think of themselves as strong, silent loners, wise to human folly. But although they are often arrogant, self-absorbed and predictable, they are also susceptible to the weather, and happy to be upstaged by unseasonable storms, torpid nights, fierce sunlight, or the chance of a swim in the limpid sea ...”

“... This man has a discerning eye for the details of attractive female presentation: he can see her self through her clothes, not just her body and income. Catherine, in turn, inwardly admires the set of Henry’s hat and the capes of his greatcoat. The sexual appeal of dress was not an appropriate topic for public conversation between men and women, but in ...”

“... by his obscene and irrational father, Abraham, could be taken as an analogy for the state of self-imposed tutelage Kant wanted society to escape. Prudently, the Prussian royal censor banned him from writing about religion again.Kant wasn’t the first to find the story troubling. Commentators looked for ambiguity in God’s command – did he really mean ...”

“... and over is what makes a style distinctive, but it also leaves a writer vulnerable to parody, or self-parody. Parker homes in on the mannerisms that characterise ‘mezzo-Hemingways’ and Woolf’s ‘weaker sisters’, while May Sinclair is chastised for turning out books ‘with one hand tied behind her and a buttered crumpet in the other’. The one ...”

“... Eva indulged in ‘monotonous whining monologues’ that Larkin characterised as ‘resentful, self-pitying, full of funk and suspicion’. But it was precisely the viciousness of this circle that produced its opposite in Larkin’s poetry, which combines his father’s penchant for the controlling lapidary utterance (‘Life is first boredom, then ...”

“... to conclude that if that were the case, one’s teeth would chatter constantly – out of sheer self-reflexive existential fear and trembling. (Subtext in these opening paragraphs: having inordinate if not Martin Amis-like dental bills of late – on top of all the moving expenses – have decided to come out as auto-odontophobe.) Life really would be ...”

“... a narrator with Less than Zero, along with several other characters, a distinctive and highly self-conscious prose style, a time of year, and a milieu of urban self-abuse and disaffection. But there is nothing straightforward about the relationship between the books. I’m glad to have the connection made for ...”

“... reasons and seem to have been less inclined to treasure them for the instruction of posterity. Self-censoring, modest women may even have consigned the lot to the fireplace. Sex was more important than rank in determining epistolary competence in the 17th century. My own research confirms Whyman’s impression that even in the early 18th ...”

“... rich, beautiful, aristocratic, young – are driven by Sehnsucht and restlessness to pursue self-apotheosis and the meaning of life in exotic lands. Macaulay thought that Byronism was finished by 1830, but in Disraeli it ran much deeper and lasted much longer. His father, a literary antiquarian, had been admired by Byron, and would die in the arms of ...”

“... and ‘the dilettante tone has charm after the sweeping statements, the safe marble gestures, the self-importance – “I stand with the People and Government of Spain”’ – of Authors Take Sides. Apart from Robert Boyd, the crusaders in Greene’s story were members of the elite, semi-secret society of Cambridge students and graduates known as the ...”

“... your pocket, keep it open. Diminish the haft affix loosely proponent span blood group indexical self-cut. Try doing it now. That final phrase is overtly sarcastic, but not without ambiguity: the urgency of the attempt and its utter impossibility and self-deception are precisely suspended. The stanza as a whole segues even ...”

“... it has been business as usual. As the American scholar Larry Bartels pointed out, 90 per cent of self-identified Republicans voted for Trump; 89 per cent of citizens who think of themselves as Democrats voted for Clinton. It isn’t surprising either that after two presidential terms for one party, there was plenty of anti-incumbent sentiment (Clinton was ...”

“... bookish, and had been educated at home by ‘a long and dreary dynasty’ of governesses. Shy and self-conscious, sure that she ‘was not pretty’, she would rather have gone to Oxford than endure the rounds of fashionable parties: she had to ‘come out’ three times, in Florence, London and New York. She wanted to belong somewhere. Years later she would ...”

“... own teenage breakdown, feelings of intense despair and, according to her brother William, severe self-repression. Withdrawn and unhappy, he recalled, she gave up chess, ‘simply because it made her too eager for a win’. Whether it was the eagerness she feared or the winning, the poems that began to appear in her journals during these miserable years ...”