“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 50 million population of the United Kingdom. This seems to me to be a case where our principle of self-determination ought to take second place behind the principle that in a democratic society the minority have to bow to the majority. But the islanders weren’t having any of this; and so successive British governments, clearly frightened of the public (or ...”

“... Drank some ’48 claret alone.’ At the same time, like many sybarites, he was drenched in self-pity, deploring the emptiness of a life of pleasure and, looking back, saw his existence as a dark tunnel. Simplicity of life was the only answer, but one not adopted at Mentmore, where, as that waspish paedophile Loulou Harcourt claimed, ‘truffles seem to ...”

“... other people’), whereas Murry’s frankness was often a kind of falsity arising from his deep self-deception. It was the shining earnestness of this self-deception that initially appealed to people. He radiated ‘a kind of religious enthusiasm’, Huxley remarked. ‘At first, people tended to catch fire from this ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... natural superiority … was modelled on the heroes of John Buchan: decent, anti-intellectual, self-deprecating and eternally stiff of upper lip’. Sometimes, the officer in Russia actually was one of Buchan’s or Rudyard Kipling’s heroes: Brigadier-General Ironside, earlier encountered by Buchan in Africa after the Second Boer War, served as ...”

“... ruthless, underhanded son of a bitch’. With Barnes, there was no middle ground, minuscule self-doubt and no remorse over those he belittled, slandered and discarded; you were either in or, forever, out. As is often the case with those described as ‘complex’, Barnes had only two gears: forward or reverse, nice or nasty, the latter mode suddenly ...”

“... about Pompey and Caesar.’ It’s easy to forget, because we know what happened next, but also self-evidently true, as we know from our own experience: however horrifying the political catastrophe unfolding around us, we still devote ourselves primarily to the interpersonal and institutional jostling of our own little lives. So it was at Rome, and in those ...”

“... sophisticated, eventually becoming more real than the man. Like all writers, Rushdie had a shadow self, and had to deal with people confusing him with his creations, but the shadow remained a function of the self. The fatwa severed the shadow from the man. It travelled all over the world, terrorised people and entrenched ...”

“... human nature and contrived political systems that aimed no higher than the accommodation of sordid self-interest. A curious problem arises here for American conservatives: the American constitution, whose checks and balances were designed so that competing interests counteracted one another, derives from this stunted vision of humanity. How can patriotic ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... be separated from his distaste for the mores of ‘Western’ Jews, itself a part of that deeply self-destructive mode from which he fashioned some of his most memorable images and scenes. The manner in which the central characters of his stories – Gregor Samsa in ‘The Metamorphosis’, Josef K. in The Trial and K. in The Castle – are related to the ...”