“... on all counts. Far from being a half-educated dilettante, he was, they write, ‘essentially, and self-consciously, a trained modern staff officer’. His abiding affection for the horse notwithstanding, he demonstrated a keen interest in hurrying into battle new technologies such as gas, the aeroplane and the tank. However much he might grouse in private ...”

“... mimicking exactly what his father and grandfather did before him, are often both clichéd and self-conscious. Yet what follows is unconscionable: And then, when the bottle was gone, I danced. Slowly at first. But getting faster. I stomped my feet and kicked my legs, joints cracking. I pounded my feet and crouched and kicked in the dance my father ...”

“... the Sky by Suzanne Clothier: do not follow dog-experts blindly … instincts … humanity) and self-help pundits (The Necessary Disobedience by Maria Modig, dedicated to Milgram: empowerment … taking responsibility), as well as being the source for a Peter Gabriel song entitled ‘We Do What We’re Told (Milgram’s 37)’. A French punk rock group ...”

“... sees a role for a charismatic Head, at least in a school’s popular reputation and its own self-imaging. But outside factors beyond any Head’s control, as well as sheer economics, are almost always more significant in ensuring that a school thrives. More often than not, periods of apparent decline at Harrow, measured crudely by pupil ...”

“... been invested with some of the Left’s more romantic aspirations. There is probably an element of self-delusion in this. Migrants are heroes of the Left only in the host country, not in the nations from which they come; and if you call them settlers instead, they immediately appear in a rather different light. Nevertheless, migration remains significant for ...”

“... King School in Akron, Ohio, in June 1935, Alcoholics Anonymous has grown into the largest secular self-help organisation in the Western world. With its ten million members, it’s bigger than the Freemasons, the Rotarians, the TUC, the White Aryan Resistance, the Samaritans, the KKK, the Women’s Institute and – in terms of weekly attendance – the Church ...”

“... father, with his filing. The Chalfens are an entertaining lot who have an incredible capacity for self-belief (their favourite word is ‘Chalfenism’), but you get the impression that more than entertainment is at stake. With their introduction, class differences are nicely bridged (racial differences were smoothed over in the opening chapters), and the ...”

“... petits-fours. In her memoirs, she says more than her modern biographers about the ingenuity and self-discipline required of a salonnière: ‘One had to give up being oneself and devote oneself – and other people – entirely to the cult of the great man . . . to tie up all the threads which, from those divergent vanities, had to lead back to the same ...”

“... that are making the seasons fluctuate and the animals with a genius for creating enemies. All our self-destructive behaviour, whatever else we think it is, may be an attempt to put a stop to the struggle. And if we begin to hate our own struggle for survival, we may want to suppress it in others. Clearly, our capacity to destroy other species – not to ...”

“... seriousness. In trading rooms there’s an extraordinary, almost demonic fusion between the self-serving, relentless pursuit of profit, and some of the higher reaches of abstract thought, as embodied in the teams of post-doctoral mathematicians and physicists employed by every big bank. And for the competitive, simplistic characters who tend to be ...”

“... present-day relevance of their subject. That history shapes us and our world ought to appear so self-evident as to set it above tie-ins with newspaper headlines. Yet history never repeats itself exactly; and while ‘lessons can be learned’ from the past, one can always conjure a multitude of pasts to choose from. Presents, too. A basic classroom lesson ...”

“... factor in overcoming her resistance to marriage. Sylvia’s Lovers (1863) is built around a more self-serving deception: Philip, in love with Sylvia, conceals from her that her accepted suitor, taken by a press gang, has promised to return to her. Wives and Daughters (1866) has two concealed relationships: a secret marriage and a case of romantic ...”

“... what makes a painting come alive, as Coldstream was naturally aware: one of his finely turned self-deprecating lines referred to ‘the sort of configurations I make under the guise of representing what I see’. One hazard of his tactics is that for almost any spectator, even Laughton on occasion, those marks can seem to choke stretches of Coldstream’s ...”

“... formulated it before him, and it requires an uncomfortable reliance on Talleyrand’s letters and self-serving memoirs. Lawday also has a shaky grasp of non-Talleyrandian French history. Louis XV did not ‘rule the country according to the unbudging feudal concepts of his Bourbon forefathers’. Louis XVI was his predecessor’s grandson, not his son, was ...”

“... but found himself ‘constantly interrupted by Mrs Thatcher . . . who fixed him with a blank, self-absorbed stare. “The extent of her ill-conceived ignorance at that time was only matched by the brazen vigour with which she expressed it,” he recalled.’ That was Thatcher all over, as even such slavish acolytes as Geoffrey Ripon gradually ...”