“... with The Other and that there are half-baked metaphysical maunderings rattling about behind the self-conscious strangeness and writing-bum-on-a-wall prose. The benchmark for Charlieunclenorfolktango and, to a much lesser extent, Canteen Culture, is Irvine Welsh’s sprawling bent-copper novel Filth. When it was first published in 1998, the word-of-mouth was ...”

“... someone who has versified the 150th anniversary of Rochdale’s Co-Operative Society – is its self-imposed length. It is one thing to write a numerically regular poem like the brilliant but brief ‘Ten Pence Story’ (ten-syllable lines distributed among ten stanzas – the sort of poetry mathematics of which Peter Reading, an admirer of Armitage’s ...”

“... One could even, metaphorically, call it an ‘explorer’ narrative, for it is partly a work of self-exploration. It seems to help, though, if we narrow our definition of ‘travel book’ or ‘travel writing’ so as to exclude real and literal explorer narratives – such a book, shall we say, as Mungo Park’s Travels. It is a memorable book, but Park ...”

“... as opponents. His first book on the subject, Policing Shanghai 1927-37 (1995), described the self-subverting involvement of the new Kuomintang government’s municipal police bureau in both the opium trade and the civil war against the Communists. The Shanghai Badlands: Wartime Terrorism and Urban Crime 1937-41 (1996) carried the story into the period of ...”

“... cry in anticipation of a whipping is shameful, as it reveals that the dog has ‘no honour and no self-discipline’. By this point, I was cringing at the images and feeling ashamed myself, unable to rescue the dog or punch Mann. A climax of dog-inspired shame is to be found in a documentary by Ulrich Seidel who, in the style of reality TV, filmed ...”

“... dramatises, sometimes ostentatiously, the profound obstacles to communication – the wall between self and other, the rattle of consciousness – that confront everyone: ‘I remembered mishearing Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus as a child. Barnamum Bailey. Like Osmium, Cardamom, Brainium, Barnamum, Where’smymom … Not now, I begged my Tourette’s ...”

“... impressing the boy with a sense of the importance of his new name and, consequently, his new self: ‘All that school year I felt as if I had been chosen, and although, as I also knew, such a belief in no way matched my uncertain status, I have held fast to it almost my whole life.’ He spends most of his life, however, in ignorance of his ‘real ...”

“... This was one of the cases that proved to be the undoing of the well-known alienist and self-publicist George Man Burrows (who had quite a stock of delusions of his own, among them that he could smell madness and detect a ‘maniacal odour’). He was given a keelhauling in the press for his arrogance and disregard for the liberty of the ...”

“... imagination, within which his characters, acting in the belief that they are distinctive, self-driven individuals, reveal themselves to be subject to internal and external forces over which they have little or no control. This moment-by-moment melding together of the characters’ isolation and self-seeking, on the ...”

“... But his most potent influence lay in his reconfiguring of the domestic ideal. The concept of a self-contained suburban home, with a spacious garden and accommodation laid out without physical divisions between the resident family and its servants, had its origins in Pugin’s work. Such a house, as Pugin envisaged it, must function as a coherent ...”

“... contesting ‘conventional monikers of left and right’. Diagonalists, in this typology, mostly self-identify as middle-class and are disproportionately self-employed. Klein is particularly interested in the wellness-anti-vaxxer connection, which she thinks is partly to do with all the yoga teachers going bust over ...”

“... cries out, again and again, ‘I didn’t! I swear I didn’t,’ before her protests give way to self-doubt and depression. ‘I suppose I must have.’ Each time she gives in, Gregory’s face flashes with something like arousal. ‘Yes. YES,’ he says. ‘That’s right: you’re imagining things.’Gregory’s chief motivation isn’t sadism but ...”

“... vacated. A spoon and umbrella have become relics, relayed with delicate attention to tone. The self-portraits, many of which feature facial expressions inspired by Rembrandt’s, extend passing moods beyond their natural lifespan. Arikha depicted so many overcoats that it almost seems a compulsion – it’s hard not to think of those who died of exposure ...”

“... He sees the gap between what he is saying and what he pretends to be saying. His irony affords no self-criticism, but it is full of leering self-awareness. The film has none of this, no contrition or glee or reflection, and in certain respects it is remarkably austere. This is in large part why viewers’ reactions have ...”

“... from 1937, eventually precipitating a clash with the US. For conservatives, the war of national self-defence began in December 1941 when Japan, suffering terribly under American sanctions, fought back by launching an attack on Pearl Harbor. On 14 August, in a statement to mark the 70th anniversary of surrender, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe surprised nobody but ...”