“... invade the older social frameworks of the large household. Conceding too much in an oddly self-abasing conclusion to his expansive account of literary servants, Bruce Robbins declares himself ‘ready to grant that I have not been talking about what is necessarily most complex, sophisticated, profound or even interesting in the English novel’. Do ...”

“... of ‘psychological’ explanations of social failure and contempt for those who ‘wallowed’ in self-analysis are wholly out of tune with the current explosion of ‘counselling’ (the fastest-growing of the new parapsychological professions). Her suggestion that in certain circumstances wage-reductions were a necessary tool of rational economic planning ...”

“... the seriousness of the situation.’ Recent experience in Bosnia, though, suggests that in self-defence even artillery fire can be compatible with traditional British notions of minimum force and peace-keeping. General Sir Peter de la Billière, commander of the British forces in the Gulf, is more obviously a Clausewitzian, arguing that ‘once they ...”

“... wider than that of a mere transition from colonial to para-colonial institutions of African self-government, such as occurred around 1960. They are not thinking, that is, of the ending of the era of imperialism tout court, for they are too deeply versed in their subject to suppose that financial and trading imperialism can be anywhere near its ...”

“... Zapata). It was characterised throughout by a quite astonishing degree of duplicity, cynicism, self-seeking, and uninhibited recourse to violence. Indeed, it so often appears to be no more than a protracted slugging-match between rival caudillos that it can be (and has been) questioned whether it should be called a revolution at all. Alan Knight, whose ...”

“... medicine satisfies an immature hankering to play the big guy, basking in glory, the apparent self-sacrifices involved assuaging feelings of guilt and providing ego-defence. The heroics of the operating-theatre or the ‘fire brigade’ drama of the emergency call gratify Boy’s Own Paper cravings for adventure, and above all the authority structures of ...”

“... the very few writers down under who could be fanciful by nature, without giving any impression of self-consciousness. But in fact realism in the usual sense was not what anyone produced, for Australian writing took everything for granted – the empty country, the dust, the trees, the urban scene above all – because taking things for granted is the stance ...”

“... book. In the upshot Pauline hardly behaves sensibly, but she has reached a measure of self-approval, which is hard come by in Rathmines. In the fiction of Richard Yates we are down among the half-lives (Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, Young Hearts Crying): New Yorkers who are hopeful as kids, humiliated as adolescents, uncommunicative as ...”

“... well out of these dreams. I believe that man, nowadays, is more fanatical than ever. But it’s self-infatuation. He sings of nothing else, and in the action of the mind that leaps beyond the stars, devouring space and gazing on infinity, as Montaigne would say, he finds nothing more exalted than that same human misery from which the mind is constantly ...”

“... than other Muldoon volumes. His previous long poems in particular tend to be sealed off within the self-reflexive confines of their own ludic patterning, a maze of mirrors one enters arbitrarily and inexplicably: the action of ‘Immram’ (Why Brownlee Left, 1980), for instance, is initiated by ‘a sixteen-ounce billiard cue’ with which the narrator is ...”

“... exactly a lost classic, as it is billed, since it was published in 1928, and again, in a slightly self-censored version, in 1968 – says he asked William Burroughs what he thought. ‘It’s the book that made me want to be a writer,’ Burroughs said. But was it poetry? ‘Of course it’s poetry. It rhymes.’ It is ‘closer to “Frankie and ...”

“... clear. The enforcement of Western environmental standards on developing countries expresses the self-indulgent romanticism of late-modern consumer cultures. It is both self-deceiving and inequitable. Developing countries cannot hope to protect their environments by curtailing economic growth. On the contrary, only further ...”

“... duty was to keep clear. Only ‘weak-chinned, weak-kneed liberals, social democrats and self-seeking gentlemen of no principles’ professed to believe otherwise. In Folsom’s unstructured account of the League’s history he comes back again and again to the question of the League’s Communist position. ‘Did the Communist Party control the ...”

“... the newspapers, coughing through his papirosi. Russian hospitality is complete and coercive, self-sacrificing and non-negotiable. I had with me my seven-year-old son, Jacob. We were given the smaller of the two rooms as our bedroom, while Sasha lodged with friends nearby, and Natasha, Tania and Nikolai slept in the larger room. No question of a hotel or ...”

“... often in the works of Philip Larkin? And which of these two poets would you reckon was the more self-centred, fond of flowers, susceptible to hyphens, keen on using the word mother? Such are the questions that can spin off from too many hours spent browsing in the realms of the Concordance. It so happens that both Larkin and Eliot have lately had their ...”