“... that could be deduced from a comprehensive biography like this one, or indeed from Waugh’s own self-projections, whether in his own life or in the heroes of his novels. Powell perceived, for instance, that Waugh was perfectly at home in his father’s house, that the pair were for the most part on affectionate terms and understood each other very ...”

“... and too little creation’. This mode brings you Tolstoy’s historiography, or the relentless self-commentary of certain metafictionists. But there’s another option: the novel that doesn’t alternate drama and analysis but dramatises analysis itself. In such novels, characters are understood more by what they think and say than by what they do, and the ...”

“... and the vicissitudes of nation-building are less compelling subjects than the everyday task of self-individuation. Their cultural reference points are eclectic and varied, their relationship with the tribal pieties of their parents’ and grandparents’ generation often tongue-in-cheek. To be pigeonholed by well-meaning readers, in spite of this, as a ...”

“... themselves, and thus tend to practise what they preach. Studying sexuality is always at some level self-study, rather as writing about popular culture, for most of the students who do it these days, involves watching movies and TV shows they would have watched anyway. There is thus a convenient continuity between one’s academic and one’s actual life, as ...”

“... Rose Wilder Lane, who wrote the books with her mother, intended them to be a defence of ‘the self-reliant, the independent, the courageous man’ whom she saw ‘penalised from every direction’, but especially by the New Deal, which was ‘killing what, to me, is the American pioneering spirit’. She told a friend that if only there were a politician ...”

“... the Celtic Tiger was starting to roar, but belonged in spirit to an earlier, less well-heeled and self-assured society. Most of the book is set on the wild western coast of County Mayo, a place with some symbolic resonance in Irish letters. It is the setting for Synge’s great drama The Playboy of the Western World, and has come to be associated with all ...”

“... Perhaps it’s a new kind of narcissism, where you only get to feel fully realised, successful and self-loving when you look at your reflection in the pool and see your idol. And having your idol’s shoes and handbag is one of the ways to achieve that. Fame today is a matryoshka doll: inside each celebrity is a series of smaller, hollow simulacra, and, at the ...”

“... of class and inequality to bear on subject matter buried deep in the foundations of America’s self-image, and which might be perceived as conservative. The characters in Olive, Again who uncritically celebrate their Americanness are satirised: the bleak English teacher Mrs Ringrose dressing up as a Pilgrim at Thanksgiving, or the foolish Fergus MacPherson ...”

“... of more than four hundred declarations of war from the late 16th century to 1939 reveals that self-defence and the enforcement of treaty, international or succession laws were the reasons cited most often by states. In addition to permitting frequent armed conflict, the lawful status of war had other consequences for international relations. Since force ...”

“... woman whose protagonist is a nonconforming young man. The two examine childhood, parenthood and self-determination, at a time when true autonomy is rare. The British novel reads like a socialist manifesto: simple workers try to lead honest lives and evil landowners manipulate them; its nuance comes in depictions of the natural environment and its attention ...”

“... black bourgeoisie the Garland men are noted for their reserve, outward propriety and aristocratic self-regard. Talcott has spent his life living up to the Garland ideal and is expected to redeem the Garland family name. He followed his father into the law and teaches at their shared alma mater, Elm Harbor (a lightly fictionalised Yale Law School). Unlike his ...”

“... empire. They reject the popular idea that Americans go to war only as a last resort, motivated by self-defence or the desire to preserve and spread freedom rather than national aggrandisement. ‘Good wars’, like the Revolution and World War Two, which seem to fit this model, are memorialised in Washington, Hollywood films and national bestsellers. Anderson ...”

“... age superstitions: astrology, palmistry, the reading of auras and energies, and the twin goals of self-development and self-enhancement. Mantel wryly deflates the pretensions and the language of spiritualism: one of Al’s bitterest regrets is that Morris is so vulgar and cruel, while ‘other mediums have spirit guides ...”

“... poem with Derrida’s employment of concepts sous rature’; and ‘the Commedia is a foray into self-consciously “virtual reality”.’ On religion: after the invention of printing, ‘it became easier to feel that you had “finished” the Bible as you might finish an Agatha Christie, and correspondingly easier to think of the sacred writings as like a ...”

“... are harsh lyrics about promise and failure, and even the title of ‘I Had a Future’ admits self-doubt. Among these poems, however, are also the triumphantly assertive lyric manifestos of ‘Kerr’s Ass’, ‘Innocence’, ‘The Hospital’, and ‘Epic’, which begins: I have lived in important places, times When great events were decided: who ...”