“... on him more strongly than guilt; he is too anxious to secure an explanation; what appears to be self-analysis is more often a deployment of cliché to bolster his own myth, the myth of the bent branch, the wrong turning. ‘No one,’ he complains, ‘wants to believe ever that I am just an ordinary man come to an extraordinary and overwhelming ...”

“... public art, although these paintings, like the Chrysler Building and the Rockefeller Centre, were self-referential. They did not glorify the city, or victories, or political alliances, or history, or the land, but the artist himself and his creativity: art galleries apart, was there a natural home for them? In 1958, when Mies van der Rohe and Philip ...”

“... distinguish the Ulster Protestant identity from the identity of groups who have made good, through self-defence, their title to self-determination as national states. In the last analysis, readiness to fight for ‘freedom, religion and laws’ – a way of life – is the ultimate determinant. Loyalist selfishness, so ...”

“... superciliousness, aggressive insecurity. In his relations with fellow scholars he was cavalier and self-serving, chary of giving other workers their due except by way of blame. When, 70-years-old and in ill health, he was faced with the gravest crisis in his career, he was exceedingly vulnerable to attack, the more so because his considerable powers as a ...”

“... war. The United States became the champion of Argentine membership, while Molotov, ideologically self-righteous, and quoting at length from Roosevelt and Cordell Hull, cited her manifold disqualifications. But the line of collusive solidarity held. Argentina was voted in as soon as White Russia and the Ukraine had been confirmed as suitable peace-loving ...”

“... any rate, nothing cataclysmic takes place that will not finally be redeemed and retrieved. As the self-educated inventor Fred T. Barry assures our eponymous hero: ‘Human being [sic] always treat blizzards as though they were the end of the world.’ But the raging storms that have swept over the plains of the Middle West are due to vanish without trace, or ...”

“... but it is necessary candour ‘to own that heroes and heroines are often the vessels of our most self-flattering illusions.’ She has gone carefully into the setting of events; some readers may wish for a rather fuller introduction to the Hundred Years War and what it was about, but there is a chronological table to assist their memories. Speaking of ...”

“... vivid book, New York Cops Talk Back: A Study of a Beleaguered Minority.1 They used to derive their self-esteem from the belief that they were the guardians of society, the embodiment of its values: they represented right. The police force, moreover, used to be a means by which poor people could climb the social ladder. But now they feel they are no longer ...”

“... transform it by degrees and by logical extension to a point where fantasy had become reality. The self-reflecting fiction at the centre of the play is perhaps one of those conceits that many writers new to a form are tempted to exploit. As it turned out, it was not, as I had feared, too literary or undramatic. It simply became a feature of the central ...”

“... translators are prone to favour, in my experience, as being an ideal compromise between their self-esteem and that chronic sense of betrayal of the original which haunts their working days. (The giving of marks in itself is a reminder that translation begins at school, and that it remains a discipline more than an art.) During breaks from A la ...”

“... Mac-Donald, the argument runs, Labour stood in need of a personality who would put party above self, and Attlee fitted the bill. Yet in his quiet fashion he was skilful in managing the Party and holding it together. Hence Labour’s victory in the General Election of 1945, and the historic achievements of postwar reconstruction, were in large measure due ...”

“... It was nearly always men whose well-earned successes the preachers of the Victorian self-help ethic borrowed for their exempla, but they could have cited instances of female authors who not only staved off destitution as portionless spinsters or unprovided-for orphans but through heroic labours paid off the debts of spendthrift, incompetent or ...”

“... comes to terms with one’s past.’ How very American, I thought: the quest for roots; self-measurement against the promise of the past; the reunion as a personal and collective stock-taking. A painful business. Meanwhile, however, Tony was persuading me. As a student of American culture, who had had a particular college experience in the United ...”

“... giving rise to a ramshackle form of capitalism swiftly overtaken by other countries. So much for self-help! From this angle, Barnett is no Thatcherite: he does not suppose that a return to laissez-faire in 1945 would have wrought an economic miracle. On the contrary, he believes the Churchill coalition ought to have developed a coherent industrial ...”

“... about hospitals,’ she said. And why should she not? Pym is wonderfully open-eyed about the self-proclamation of the caring and compassionate lobby, and the way in which, in life as in fiction, its roles get adopted and its fantasies acted out. A natural do-gooder, like most of Pym’s leading characters, the heroine cannot help wondering if there might ...”