“... existing in 1948, and was reborn on 15 November 1988, the second a country that began its public self-destruction in April 1975, and has not stopped. In both polities there are and have been people whose national identity is threatened with extinction (the former) or with daily dissolution (the latter). In such societies the novel is both a risky and a ...”

“... Charmian (an ‘infantile’ mate-woman, as Stone portrayed her), and ultimately to suicide from a self-administered overdose of morphine. Stone based his suicide thesis on interviews and on some alleged notes by the dying man’s bed. ‘Uremia’, Stone alleged, was a cover-up by Charmian and her pliant doctors. Stone’s Sailor on Horseback remains both ...”

“... larger-than-life, and to keep caste as caviare to the general. This applies just as much to the self-confessed puritans of the genre (Gluck, Wagner, Birtwistle) as to the unapologetic sensualists (Handel, the Italians, Strauss): perhaps only Debussy in Pelléas et Mélisande has successfully transcended this fundamental crudity of impact. In the period ...”

“... lights and the more ambitious cadres were heavily besuited, as betokens the new ruling class they self-consciously aspire to be. Nelson Mandela was shocked to see T-shirted drivers chauffeuring VIPs like himself and immediately prescribed collars and ties. Adelaide Tambo and Winnie Mandela vied with one another in the extravagance of the traditional African ...”

“... felt constrained by the situation he was in, and his tone is for the most part gentle and self-deprecating. It is, therefore, all the more interesting that in spite of his evident concern not to appear churlish by criticising those who have gathered to honour him he speaks plainly on one point. Parrinder had accused him of being narrowly ...”

“... came to nothing in their idleness. Henry Senior’s passionate filial revolt against the ruthless self-interest embodied by William of Albany continued in the mystical-theological sphere, where he had an eccentric angle pretty much to himself – which at least gave him a lifetime’s driven work. It greatly helps The Jameses to hang together, as it helped ...”

“... sensation. Simone de Beauvoir was to cite them in The Second Sex as the archetypal example of ‘self-centred female narcissism’, but also as the discovery by the female of her independent personal existence. The young Katherine Mansfield worshipped them too, and modelled herself on them, and there is a striking similarity, in the appearance of face and ...”

“... has been used affirmatively by sexual minorities for the elaboration of appetite into self-definition, it has not been used by them for its regulation. And the general recognition and institutionalisation of the variety of sexual experience has had a relativising effect on traditional morality – the morality that privileges and circumscribes a ...”

“... of my country.’ He attacks the ‘affected purity’ of the French language and asserts that the self-conscious perfectionism of French writers has ‘unsinewed’ their heroic verse. Virgil identifies Aeneas’s founding of Rome with Augustus’s long stable rule, and Dryden’s version is informed by his experience of civil war, restoration, rebellion and ...”

“... and ever-fresh people, there are added the penetrating simplicities of Swift’s political self. Yet what gives tension to the story and its simplicities is the diverse irony of Swift’s temperament and circumstances, so that the world of Swift is always single and double. Ehrenpreis is nowhere more disciplinedly imaginative than when retailing the ...”

“... of some international problem. With some passion, extensive citation of material, and a somewhat self-regarding manner, such books made it apparent that there was a great deal in the way of conspiracy and intrigue that ought to be told. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was a great practitioner of the art in the last century and in this short, sparkling and committed ...”

“... one big and fat and ugly ... I’m not too clear about the other two.’ This is Adams’s stab at self-consciousness. What none of the characters talk about or seem to have read is Mary McCarthy’s The Group, although they do use the word ‘group’ in inverted commas, as if they thought it had a special meaning, or a secret life. Adams is not in ...”

“... by an absence of nerves and a nation distinguished by its addiction to antimacassars, rhubarb and self-righteousness. Dorothy Strachey appears in his early diaries and autobiographical essays as an effusive elder sister: ‘Dorothy ... kissed me a hundred times, in a rapture of laughter and affection, counting her kisses, when I was six’; as a stiff little ...”

“... monograph, ‘bewildering, preposterous, hilarious and moving’. A life, most certainly, that no self-respecting servant would be seen dead living. Mallarmé also said of him: ‘The word “infinite” can only be proffered worthily by a young man looking like Louis XIII, wearing furs and with fair hair.’ Villiers, A.W. Raitt tells us, ‘changed the ...”

“... the Physiognomonica, attributed in the Renaissance to Aristotle, that a clouded brow ‘signifies self-will (audacia) as in the lion and the bull’, and then hints that this may be why Michelangelo portrayed David frowning. But surely an explanation would only be needed if David, who is waiting for the big kill, was not frowning. Summers also wants to ...”