“... felt the same, each in his own way – that what he really liked about me was a shadow-self of his own creation: someone who combined a colonial’s dash and freedom from convention with Jewish wisdom and an artist’s melancholy and percipience. No wonder he was disappointed! He was a great categoriser of people, and when he had a category he ...”

“... to being written about, though her three novels and 12 volumes of poetry seemed to have taken her self-portrait as far as it need go. It might be thought, too, that after the death of her sister in 1975 the truth about Stevie, if hidden, would be hard to find. However, her biography has now been undertaken by two American scholars – a matter of satisfaction ...”

“... France in the 1780s), and also that this could be avoided by making wars of conquest self-supporting, or even profitable. On the other hand, the fiscal problem of how to pay for wars is barely considered, nor the advantages and consequences of various means of doing so, such as the inflationary printing of currency which (as Galbraith has ...”

“... seeks to persuade the hierarchy in Europe. Most of the way he is portrayed as manipulative, self-seeking and spiritually vain. But his end is a noble one, and his part in the mission has at least ensured a hearing for the faith amid all the diplomatic skirmishing. Hasekura is at first baffled by the worship Christians accord to ‘this ugly emaciated ...”

“... in hand’. Popean, if not quite Mandevillian, in their humanitarianism, the benefactors knew that self-love and social were the same. As Thomas Coram himself computed the matter of charity towards the young, ‘a pound of malaga Raisins which costs 3d fills them with above 5 pounds worth of Love for me.’ Basking in the theatricality of good works in the ...”

“... how infuriating it is that our bureaucratic rulers should have cooked up these plans for their self-preservation without opening the subject to the public and proper Parliamentary debate. Part of the trouble stems from the British disease of rule by a permanent establishment of regular civil servants, military officers and intelligence officers who embrace ...”

“... Arnots looked bleak. Fortunately for the couple, and for British Business, common sense and mutual self-interest prevailed. The Saudis keep much of their money in Britain, or channel it through the City. A real, as distinct from a purely cosmetic display of displeasure would do them as much harm as us. A bargain was struck. Lord Carrington made his notorious ...”

“... thousands of brave citizens who opposed or defied them. They appear to shrink from looking some self-evident truths in the face. One such truth is that the horrors of the Dirty War were no secret either to the Callaghan or Thatcher governments, or to many others in the allied world; and that if the allied powers had rallied behind the Carter ...”

“... riff about being cheered for breaking wind in the street (after hours of Wagner): ‘Then a self-important thought came in my mind. Supposing that they knew this old man walking along Long Acre and farting was Stephen Spender – what would they think?’ Leavis, he reckoned, would not have been amused. This is not the utterance of the goose or juggins ...”

“... ambition with love, even though the love he describes sometimes seems exorbitant in its ambition. Self-hatred is always the temptation – for Spufford especially – and other people are there to help us ward it off. ‘The only comfort that can do anything – and probably the most it can do is help you to endure, or if you cannot endure, to fail and fold ...”

“... suddenly soars with great style, wielding his pen like the sword of truth over the heads of these self-satisfied popinjays. ‘Glasgow,’ he writes, ‘for this East Coast writer, could be summed up in the phrase “coarse and vulgar” – a snooty Edinburgh perception of the place which has not entirely vanished today.’ Many writers were drawn to point ...”

“... full of my conflicting emotions towards my homeland. Nostalgia, longing, but also fear and self-loathing and darkness – all those things are contained in this tiny piece. I did not realise this when I painted it many years ago. When one is young’ – he raised his eyebrow and turned to look at Margaret – ‘one does not see such things. But ...”

“... seasons. Henry VIII, whose faithful servant More professed to be and for the most part was, was a self-willed tyrant whose last resort against the papal refusal to sanction his divorce from Catherine of Aragon and his marriage to Anne Boleyn was to dethrone the pope as head of the church in England. In this he had the counsel of the ruthless and crafty Thomas ...”

“... interested in what it means to be told your sexuality is disgusting: what it does to your sense of self, and how it contaminates desire. His writing is unusual in combining Hollinghurst’s frankness with an agonised sensitivity to how that frankness can be perceived.In What Belongs to You (2016), Greenwell’s first novel, the narrator recalls how the ...”

“... me better. You always doubted me, doubted my love, the deep emotion that made me give my whole self to you, only to you.’ In 1927, with money in mind, she began a memoir of their life together. It consisted largely of patchy diary entries (she would write these for a day or two then lapse: ‘It’s the same when I make up my mind to keep a record of our ...”