“... of violence’, meaning the allegedly erroneous supposition that political domination – purely self-serving and not the instrument of any preexisting economic class – could ever be the basis of a social system. It is ironic that an ideology which has helped to engender such a system should also deprive itself of any language in which to describe it.) His ...”

“... could be x-thousands, peppered with I’s’. As a compromise, we have this kebab: fatty scraps of self-revelation alternating with more substantial portions of fiction. Personal privacy is clearly a valued property of Barker’s and one which sometimes seems at odds with her mission as creative writer, let alone ...”

“... he finally produces an image of that kind of Englishman with which, as MacDiarmid saw, his later self can be at ease. It is not that Sherston was either A weak or a cowardly person. It is rather that his rebelliousness was only Superimposed on his profoundly English nature. Sherston’s Progress completes the image which first appeared in Memoirs of a ...”

“... both born commoners, crowned themselves Shah and ended up in exile, broken men – like that other self-crowned emperor, Napoleon. It seems now to have been forgotten that Reza Shah too was shunted around in exile, prevented from going where he wished to go. Forced off the throne by the Allies to secure access to Iranian oil during the Second World War, Reza ...”

“... the Anti-Rightist campaign in the later part of 1957, and so forced Mao to claim in retrospective self-justification that his permissive Hundred Flowers policy had been no more than a trap to trick the regime’s enemies into exposing themselves. There is an article in the People’s Daily of 19 January this year attributing this 1957 campaign simply to ...”

“... for production values, something simpler and more sympathetic was beginning to stir. With more self-analysis, might David Selznick have made better movies? Ronald Haver asks no such question. He spends as little time exploring Selznick’s feelings as he does evaluating his films or examining why Gone with the Wind wowed Middle America. When he does refer ...”

“... was never slow to point this out: ‘A scholar who, like a Hindu ascetic immersed in self-contemplation, confines himself to his narrow field of specialisation, loses the larger view. The first requirement for the musicologist is to realise that the choice of studying other disciplines is governed not by his tastes and ideas alone, but by sheer ...”

“... embody the gentleman ideal, but Furbank is surely right in saying that consciousness, and their self-consciousness, prevent them by definition from doing so. In her excellent book Trollope and the Idea of the Gentleman Shirley Letwin showed how Trollope came closest of the Victorian authors to creating a picture of social morality based on that ideal, but ...”

“... easy to write a clear-sighted account of a gifted writer who is wily, opinionated and defensively self-descriptive: ‘This is a foot-off-the-ground novel,’ explains the narrator of Novel on Yellow Paper. ‘And if you are a foot-on-the-ground person, this book will be for you a desert of weariness and exasperation.’ Jack Barbera and William McBrien ...”

“... her experience, knows it almost too well’; ‘One became almost too aware of Goffman’s “the self as performed character”.’ But then Hartman is in a difficult position, as a self and as a performing character. Matthew Arnold is still the enemy, yet Hartman is enough of a realist to know that there is at least some ...”

“... grappling with similar problems of communication between and within cultures. Mottahedeh is more self-conscious about his role as an interpreter than the other two, whose aims are more traditional, objectivist and discipline-based. Bakhash breaks his cover, though, in dedicating his book ‘to Roy [Mottahedeh?] ... and to my Iranian friends who loved the ...”

“... are thoroughly miserable on their own, even when they are pretending they are not. They have sad, self-deceiving affairs with others, and they stay apart, through pride and confusion and a little bad luck, for a whole year. The book follows them diligently, month by month, notes their dipping and swerving moods, the changing weather, the foliage, the ...”

“... the demonstrations provoked by the Boer War, he wonders ‘whether England were losing some of her self-control under reverses, and, worst of all, whether in her victories she were becoming blatant.’ The blatancy of jingoism tells the gentleman how he differs, how he is. The gentleman sacrifices himself, the jingo cheers from a safe distance. The gentleman ...”

“... in the knowledge that until we are truly equal we will not be truly free’. It is that self-evident truth, says Hattersley, that his book seeks to demonstrate. (Subtle politician that he is, Hattersley refers us to Susan Crosland’s biography of her husband ‘for a full account of the conversation’ between him and Crosland. In fact, Mrs ...”

“... servile and mechanic’ (to adopt the contemporary English terminology), calculating dealers, and self-interested artisans who wanted to be taken for something more exalted. The disinterested observer was free to dismiss from consideration most of the art produced since antiquity. It was the perceived absence of art worthy of elevated attention that prompted ...”