“... I had drifted into doctoral research with a 2.1 from Cambridge and an unclassified O-Level in self-confidence. My friends from university, many headed for work in London, had initially been sceptical. One of them, later the deputy prime minister, worried that academic pay was crap and I’d have to read everything. Besides, decent posts were scarce. But I ...”

“... nothing special in the animal kingdom: we have no immortal soul; there is no essential human ‘self’; our thoughts and emotions are the product of electrochemical impulses which can, in principle, be modelled by the formal problem-solving rules we call algorithms; our bodily frames and mental capacities have evolved over time and there is nothing fixed ...”

“... all, fantastic analogy is the ploy developed by Dickens to match people’s strangeness and self-contradiction.’ In his novels, we look to ‘features of physique or habits of deportment’ to reveal character. Mr Merdle, the corrupt financier in Little Dorrit, appears to condemn himself, long before anyone else has, by the manner in which he greets ...”

“... building up a network of friends, and a dependency on outside forces. Bahuns grow to adulthood ‘self-righteous but without an ability to be self-critical’. Much of this picture of relaxed child-rearing applies to most ethnic groups in Nepal. What differentiates Bahuns is their attitude to women. ‘Women in Nepal ...”

“... you like’) while she was writing her own book of philosophy. There is no mistaking the self-references. Aristotle is distinctly absent from Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. Murdoch’s indexer strove valiantly to inject a little Aristotle, managing 13 entries. This feat was achieved by, for example, including a reference to the Aristotelian ...”

“... level from abstract theoretical propositions to concrete political instances. He is candid and self-revealing in a manner free from rancour and petty self-exoneration. This does not, of course, mean that he is humble or reticent about his own role, but there is a robust integrity to his account which makes it ...”

“... rules of newspaper publishing. The Magazine’s reputation on the newspaper for being frivolous, self-absorbed, anarchic, using acres of space on what appeared to be self-indulgence and money-wasting, revolved around Francis, the éminence grise. When Don McCullin and I came back from Vietnam in 1972, McCullin’s pictures ...”

“... in the mixed mode of writing about the moral life of the local community. Hoggart recognises (self-knowledge is his strong suit, often played in this book) that he shares with Cobbett ‘a touch of driven puritanism and a special hatred of ... the incivilities of presumed status’, but the greater warmth of fellow-feeling is reserved for Sturt, ‘a ...”

“... aptly described by Caryn James as an ‘idealised version’ of Malcolm’s ‘journalistic self’, sometimes refers to her own life, but more often distances herself through impersonal observation, generalisation and literary allusion. She introduces the book with a remarkable Jamesian epigraph about ‘the reporter and the reported’ from his 1896 ...”

“... he looks back at a life of ‘botched beginnings, of tasks inadequately done’. There are gloomy self-appraisals: ‘Distracted, pleasure-seeking, frivolous, ever ready to fall in with other people’s wishes, desiring to please them, fearful of losing their good will. Years wasted, slipping by hour by hour, day by day, in a routine of undertakings external ...”

“... and visual art. Visual art returns to the fore in relation to another recurring theme: that of ‘self-reference’, in the sense that, for example, the paradoxical statement ‘I am lying’ is a statement about that statement itself. More advanced work in mathematical logic, including the proof of Gödel’s Theorem, develops the concept of ...”

“... Gentry. His theme is not estate management, or local government, but the strenuous spiritual self-examination which, together with the belief in providence and the fear of Catholics, is now guaranteed a central place in any reputable account of the origins of the ‘Puritan Revolution’; and high time too. William Hunt, whose book is ostensibly about ...”

“... is a shock because it is unforeseen, but also because it is not unforeseeable. Prickly’s self-mutilation precipitates the sudden recognition of an awful congruity in everything that has led up to it, and we experience a sudden rush of meaning to the brain. This effect is typical of Tournier’s control of the short story form. When Prickly’s mother ...”

“... his written life he aimed to defend creativity and liberty, and to demonstrate the possibility of self-transformation of the profoundest kind. No human agent could mould his life with sufficient force and accuracy to deprive him of liberty (and of divine powers to do so he saw, unlike Augustine, no evidence). Mill describes how he slowly overcame his ...”

“... betrayals or fulfilments. ‘What remains of us is love’ in the sense that love equates with self-extinction. I think Larkin here gives his own entombed precision to the symbol, which for the Symbolists gave out nothing but its own powers of suggestion. To Larkin it suggests the comfort of disappearance, selflessness, awayness, and in the universe this ...”