“... to be arrested.’ He fiercely castigates the Labour government of the 1970s for adopting ‘the self-interested politics of the marketplace’. His final disillusion runs deep, and is in marked contrast to the whole tone of the book, which is written in a racy style much like that of the Sunday Supplement memoirs of Barbara Castle, who gave him his job at ...”

“... opportunity to witness the sustained spontaneous effort of intellectual genius wrestling with its self-proposed problems.’ Perhaps this was true in many cases. But there was another kind of influence. John King, an under-graduate member of those classes and a friend, viewed Wittgenstein ‘as a man of high moral, intellectual and artistic integrity ...”

“... Eastern Europe. Straight felt that he had sold his soul to the Devil and must atone by confession, self-abasement. Societies which have been divided for centuries, familiar with the cycles of civil war, repression and patriotic compromise, are a great deal less censorious and absolute about what men and women did in their political youth. It is not strange to ...”

“... unimportant incident reflects one aspect of Mr Whitlam’s character – his not always justified self-assurance – that helped to bring his period in office to such a dramatic end. Dining with this apparently happy man, or indeed reading his memoirs, which are in places hard going, it is not easy for any non-Australian to imagine either the excitement and ...”

“... is resumed, though changed in form by interruption. Zwerdling emphasises the diaspora of the self and of English society that is chillingly written into the book’s gossip: ‘Negation regularly has the last word.’ Ruotolo, in his book’s only surprising move, proceeds from his analysis of Between the Acts to claim Woolf for anarchism, though the ...”

“... succession formula is one of the key components of any political system, Putin’s stage-managed self-coronation makes it clear that Russia doesn’t have one. To leave the decision about one’s successor to the unpredictable outcome of a genuinely competitive election is acceptable only when incumbents don’t expect to lose too much if they lose. In ...”

“... of state as well as at home. All in all the young queen had more in common with her unpopular and self-indulgent uncles George IV and William IV than the fresh-faced appearance and the famous promise to ‘be good’ suggested. Courtiers and Victoria herself recorded tearful scenes and door slamming on her part and implacable calm, or the appearance of it, on ...”

“... a further salience because the journeys undertaken involve a complex negotiation between the self-consciously contemporary and the self-consciously archaic. The condition of that salience is rhetorical rather than narrative. On each occasion, a Bowling-esque rant against the modern world’s artificiality provides a ...”

“... basis of whom they feared more, the army or the Brothers. In Cairo, the old, narrow politics of self-interest – or self-defence – seemed to be crowding out Tahrir Square’s expansive visions of a democratic future. I wondered whether Alexandria, a port city with a rich history of political independence, would be any ...”

“... Between the mid-19th century and the mid-20th, he argues, ‘social thinkers had encircled the self with wider and wider rings of relations, structures, contexts and institutions. Human beings were born into social norms, it was said. Their life chances were sorted out according to their place in the social structure; their very personalities took shape ...”

“... is a recursive process, original virtue, once thrown out of equilibrium by an external cause, may self-destruct. Political virtue requires upkeep. So Honig faces a challenge similar to Runciman’s: in democracy, virtù needs to be dispersed among the populace, not merely modelled by tribunes. Honig aims to counter the vogue current in some quarters for Carl ...”

“... Sir Hugh Casson, who had directed the architecture of the Festival of Britain, was lively-minded, self-critical and immune to lying propaganda; his vivid journal of the trip is one of Wright’s best sources. A.J. Ayer, preacher of logical positivism, was small, sensual and irrepressibly witty. John Chinnery, a ‘China expert’, was very young and still in ...”

“... long after they had become desperate, disorganised and depleted rabbles. On occasion the mask of self-belief would slip, and he would confess that all was lost; at the end, he announced to his intimates, he would put a bullet through his brain. ‘We’ll not capitulate. Never. We can go down. But we’ll take a world with us.’ The German people, Hitler ...”

“... of how hated Germany has become in parts of Southern Europe feel merely pained, misunderstood. The self-image of Germany as a bewildered, kindly nation, helpless to defend itself against greedy neighbours, dies hard. It was lent credibility a few weeks ago by an eccentric European Central Bank report which asserted that – in terms of ‘per household ...”

“... the Grantham years of strict Methodism and endless homework, before she lost her essential self in becoming a manufactured, voiced-coached projection. Like the robot warrior Maria in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. A mantle of silence had fallen over land and river. The elderly couple now perched on hard benches, with bowed heads, resting, enjoying their ...”