“... a cluster of pubs could safely navigate. Ships on weathervanes and pub signs confirmed London’s self-confidence as a world port. But the tarnished galleon on Whiston Road was empty, its immigrants dispersed. Alfred Cross, who argued in his 1906 treatise for the employment of specialist architects rather than borough engineers, had earlier won the commission ...”

“... modern political analysis, the moment when someone finally pointed out that public figures are as self-interested as the rest of us. The only trouble is that all the evidence suggests Astor was telling the truth, and Rice-Davies was lying. Maybe he would, but in the end he didn’t, did he? Davenport-Hines writes: ‘One of the cruellest details of the ...”

“... did. Heroism and hero-worship enact a similar orientation towards transcendent Fact, and so does self-forgetful labour, that ‘appeal from the Seen to the Unseen’ (‘laborare est orare’), which Carlyle describes as the only way for the unheroic to gain real as distinct from hypothetical knowledge. According to his notion of the feudal loyalty that ...”

“... about a ‘character’ who was also a type. Something was lost with the protective modesty and self-surveillance that came with the spread of a standard of politeness.Gillray’s annus mirabilis was 1782, when he produced 52 plates, most of them on political subjects. The great events he would trace in the next quarter-century include the rise and rapid ...”

“... ancient memories of persecution; both invoke a sense of solitude and existential vulnerability, a self-image that confounds (and often outrages) their far more vulnerable neighbours. When Iran was ruled by the shah, the countries were allies. But in his last years in power, he became increasingly frustrated by Israel’s expansionism and arrogance, warning of ...”

“... the Sixties, no country, whatever the system, was an island. Even though France and Britain were self-sufficient in whole blood and committed to voluntary, unpaid donation, both countries bought blood products in an international market dominated by multinational, mostly US-based companies. Whole blood was banked and credits were traded within ...”

“... rebelled against the German-dominated tastes of the Petersburg Conservatory and developed a self-conscious Russian style, incorporating ‘what they heard in village songs, in Cossack and Caucasian dances, in church chants and . . . in the tolling of church bells’. The Moscow Opera grew out of this revolt; so did Stanislavsky’s Moscow Art ...”

“... evenings for more social recreation. Among those who wrote to Carpenter and sought him out were Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon and Forster, who became a close friend. By the time he made contact in 1913, Forster was already a well-known writer. He regarded Carpenter as ‘a saviour’. It is not hard to imagine how Merrill viewed all these adoring new ...”

“... his sins (that is, his desire); or Run Lola Run (1998), in which Man communicates despair and self-hatred from the Berlin equivalent, while Woman does something about it, in postmodern fashion, three times over. As these examples demonstrate, phone boxes have led an exciting imaginary life, and not always in big cities. A good deal of folklore attaches to ...”

“... one day, he said, Mitterrand might get the job. Shortly before Mitterrand’s death, Robert Pesquet, a former member of the OAS – a far right terrorist organisation in Algeria – revealed that the incident was indeed staged and that he had been the fake assassin. The affair cast an unflattering light on Mitterrand’s character: he was ...”

“... diminish in professionals who work daily with people in pain; it would, not least, be a matter of self-protection. Once​ Mr Lagnari knew he had cancer, the rate at which his pain worsened accelerated. Of course his tumour was growing, as were the metastases in his liver, but it was also his perception that he’d been invaded that quickened his pain. At ...”

“... Treatise of Government is ‘slavery’, a fate to which Locke thought the political theory of Sir Robert Filmer condemned everyone except monarchs. Still, Machiavelli’s influence on the American revolutionaries is plain. His description in the Discourses, memorable in the way of oxymorons, of the way the tribunate made the Roman republic ‘more ...”

“... our sense of it is mostly derived from his own writings. He had an almost obsessive interest in self-portrayal. The Canzoniere is a kind of emotional autobiography; the Posteritati (‘Letter to Posterity’), which gives an account of his life up to 1351, is no less carefully tailored. As a young man he studied law in Montpellier and Bologna, but swiftly ...”

“... expressed pity for the poor women on the street, but many viewed them with misogynist contempt. Robert Fabian, a former London superintendent, wrote in his memoirs that ‘the whore is a bad apple … there is a big brown bruise on her soul, of self-indulgence and selfishness.’ But traffickers and pimps were also ...”

“... with organic agriculture; female members took leadership roles. The goal was to incubate self-governed Kurdish institutions within the Turkish state, resorting to violence only if their autonomy was threatened. ‘We will put Bookchin’s ideas into practice as the first society that establishes a tangible democratic confederalism,’ an anonymous ...”