“... gives them a compelling honesty and edge. In his novels, he sought to explore the parts of the self which most of us seek to conceal. He was also concerned with style, with how you write a sentence, how you control the music and rhythms of prose. Baldwin was born in Harlem in 1924, the eldest of a large family. His father died when he was 19. ‘On the ...”

“... the Knights of St John. The Hole is a statement and it is properly capitalised. The labourers, a self-confessed art collective, work the Hole by hand, with pick and shovel, turn and turn about: four days to complete a grave shaft, without any of the tortured grinding and screeching, the mechanical gouging that attends the uncivil engineering projects that ...”

“... forcefulness, though the play does sometimes get lost in the twists and turns of its hero’s self-study,’ or ‘As would be expected in Kant, the central argument on space and time is pursued with great – at times trying – subtlety, not to say a positive delight in showing that contrary arguments always end in logical impasse.’I am being ...”

“... David Bindman, who has studied the picture closely for thirty years, proposed that it is in fact a self-portrait, painted by Williams himself.What is the intent of the image and what is created by its beholders? The problem of Francis Williams’s portrait shows the degree to which personal identity depends on both. Three hundred years after Williams lived, it ...”

“... from the first, neither botany nor calligraphy. Even at his least traditional and generic, he is self-subduing, and his line can at times give a sense of costraint, which evokes the disciplines of a craft, and other disciplines too. But he is present, he expressed himself, in everything he did. His floral work can be consulted in books and in museums, and ...”

“... home- produced. The tribal creature is alone With only tribal words to help him blend His uncloned self with all humanity. But metaphor is often out of date. I find a powerful trope: ‘the straitjacket Of all our childhoods’, but I’ve never seen A straitjacket – drugged, behind a screen, The madman of today can raise a racket And none of it will reach ...”

“... world, at speed, the river beneath, always trying to beat his record,With me beside him in that self-same seat, the blur of tail fins, cables, skyThrough that curvilinear windshield, across bridges for the most part, but not just.Every year Murph would flip cars, trading in the 88 for a 98 Custom Sports Coup,345 horsepower Starface engine, dual rear ...”

“... come fast and smudged). There was low-pitched music on a loop-tape and snaps of herself, in that self-same dress, with dancing partners who had about them a feverish look, a touch of delirium: just what he felt each time she drew him in. He turned in his sleep. Her breasts were honeycombs and her womb a hive. The Queen in Rapture A summer of storms. A ...”

“... is multiplied. Looking at things closely leads to wondering what they are called. The sporadic self-education in natural history that goes with picking up pretty pebbles, shells and plants on country walks, and noticing the fauna, sometimes calls for my kind of optics. We are not like the old ornithologists who made their identifications from dead ...”

“... all the Slow way. Perhaps Slow Food’s most radical achievement is to have wrested the appeal to self-gratification out of the clutches of the right, to have staked a claim for the left on the sensuous high ...”

“... pages of the London Review of Books’. The piece might cause you to consider whether it’s self-indulgent and irresponsible to draw attention to the shortcomings of a government, or merely the duty of a free press. It might encourage you to think for a moment about whether or not it would be a good thing if the government weren’t ever criticised from ...”

“... by a few stern words from Andy McNab (‘Gulf War hero and ex-SAS man’); a severe and self-congratulatory leader reminded readers that ‘this is the third time the Sun has planted a “bomb” at the heart of a supposedly ultra-secure zone.’ If The Investigator ‘had been a terrorist, the third in line to the throne could have been dead by ...”

“... your stomach . . . by having a "rear” daily’. A remarkably frank passage on the perils of self-abuse – ‘you all know what it is to have at times a pleasant feeling in your private parts’ – was left out of the original edition on the insistence of the publisher, much to the disappointment of Baden-Powell’s mother, whom he had consulted on ...”

“... With whom am I speaking, are you one or many, what are u, are u, do I make my-self clear, is this which we called speech what u use, are u a living form such as theform I inhabit now letting it speak me. My window tonight casts light onto the snow,I cast from my eye a glance, a touchless touch, tossed out to capture this shine wecast ...”

“... bedroom nine foot squareyour lust your tears your choice of good and evilyour Biro and your refill.Self-Pity with Everything Grease is undignified,Vinegar’s sordid;On the back of the newspaperSomeone is murdered.She was a dry-cleaner,He was a builder;He must have noticed herJust to have killed her.Yes, to get rid of you,Someone must bother –Someone must ...”