“... the principles out in 1950 in Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, the bestselling self-help treatise in which he presents rationality as our birthright. The human mind, he wrote, is a perfect computer corrupted by ‘incorrect data’. He urged readers to reflect on their lives and ask themselves: ‘Where is the error?’ With the help of a ...”

“... to describe them. Like Kanner he found that these children were characteristically isolated and self-sufficient, their language often bizarre and idiosyncratic, but he also emphasised their unusual talents and abilities. To Asperger these children, unlike the children Kanner described, seemed full of potential: ‘While their language at times did not seem ...”

“... Chandler and Hammett fitted well with a postwar generation’s fidgety need to blow holes in the self-sustaining establishment. I think they were part of the equation for the brief explosion of political and social activity. In Tough without a Gun, a biography of Bogart, Stefan Kanfer is concerned that they don’t make screen idols like that any more. He ...”

“... The economy started going wrong in the 1970s – Tom Wolfe’s ‘me decade’. Frivolous and self-regarding, the 1970s were also profoundly grim. It was in this decade that the American (and global) economy embarked on its fateful transformation from industrial to finance-driven capitalism and that the American working class underwent a makeover that ...”

“... is that 25-year-old Tom is insulated by wealth and education, and Felix is buoyed by the self-help mantras going through his head. Bumming a cigarette, Tom asks Felix if he can hook him up with anything stronger. ‘My girl thinks I’ve got an invisible tattoo on my forehead: PLEASE ASK ME FOR WEED.’ Felix has little trouble coming out on top when ...”

“... plans, written after a catastrophic loss. In 1919, Guthrie’s older sister, Clara, died from self-inflicted burns, having set fire to herself during an argument with her mother. In 1927, Guthrie’s father, Charley, was severely burned in another fire: everyone suspected that his wife, Guthrie’s mother, Nora, had set fire to him, but Charley refused to ...”

“... heart into the earth, so it would grow. This touch of melodrama is complicated by Glück’s self-awareness about her ‘dark nature’, as in ‘“Parodos”’: I was born to a vocation: to bear witness to the great mysteries. Now that I’ve seen both birth and death, I know to the dark nature these are proofs, not mysteries – Glück likes the ...”

“... simply that kind of guy waiting for an opportunity, or catastrophe, in which to develop his true self – bad luck for Mrs Kimble but a great benefit to small-town America. What is never in doubt is Kimble’s innocence. The audience is not asked to wonder about it, or even to worry much about Kimble being caught by Gerard, since that would mean the end of ...”

“... who work for such online platforms as Uber, Lyft and Deliveroo are classed not as employees but as self-employed. They are supposedly flexible entrepreneurs, free to choose when they work, how they work and who they work for. In practice, this isn’t the case. Unlike performers in the entertainment industry (which gives the ‘gig’ economy its name), most ...”

“... agitation brought women onto the streets in unprecedented numbers. Both movements fostered self-confidence and a sense of entitlement; they gave women a political vocabulary in which to describe their experience. Live-in service came increasingly to be understood as no better than Victorian vassalage. Where other work was available, particularly in ...”

“... from courtly fabrics in order to make way for the initials of the new queen. The terrifyingly self-possessed women of the Pole family (the mother and sister of Cardinal Pole, whom Cromwell tries and fails to have assassinated) produce emblematic embroidery which entwines their family’s pansies with Princess Mary’s marigolds, and which, when the ...”

“... roots and was resolutely non-communist. In particular, he sought to develop the idea of workers’ self-management. He was part of what became known as the deuxième gauche (not to be confused with the Maoist and Trotskyist gauchismes of the 1970s), which had taken up some core ideas from 1968: a hostility to all bureaucracies and a celebration of individual ...”

“... he might win the Nobel Prize. Also, perhaps, though she doesn’t quite say so, because a heroic self-image compensated for a career that didn’t work out as well as he’d hoped. It seems that he was British: he had a ‘BBC accent’ and liked to quote George Steiner, his former teacher, on eros’s role in the classroom. But for decades he lived in ...”

“... traditional’, wanting to feel ‘centred’ in their own homes; many see it as an aspect of self-help, unearthing the ancient art of drudgery and reclaiming it for themselves. In the lifestyle sphere of social media, people are making cleaning not only their hobby, their job, their purpose and their lifeline: they are making it their philosophy, and a ...”

“... as a sham. We supposed the world was getting better when all the time it was just its old grim self, if not getting worse. The years were treacherous but we, it seems, were their accomplices. We could have known, and should have known, what was happening. The autocrats were wanton, but they were only the trigger, not the cause. They allowed us to see our ...”