“... that was ‘unmodern’. This notion persisted after decolonisation and in many ways shapes our self-understanding. ‘In several respects,’ Mbembe writes, ‘Africa still constitutes the metaphor through which the West represents the origin of its own norms, develops a self-image and integrates this image into the set ...”

“... In ‘Borges and I’, he wrote: I must remain in Borges rather than in myself (if in fact I am a self), and yet I recognise myself less in his books than in many others, or in the rich strumming of a guitar. Some years ago I tried to get away from him: I went from suburban mythologies to playing games with time and infinity. But these are Borges’s games ...”

“... he looks pale, spindly and rather stupid: a poorly-fed, late Victorian adolescent overfond of self-abuse. In the second, the one with the moustache, he is stouter, tougher, dreamier, and looks distressingly like both my mother and my cousin Toby. My companion Blakey says he looks like me. I don’t see it. I’ve been fascinated by him – and the Great ...”

“... wrought, judicious introduction describes Browne’s wide-ranging curiosity, his influences, his self-fascination, his faith and doubts. A pocket edition of Browne is good to have not least because his aphoristic style rewards casual reading. Open it at any page, and find a surprise. Browne thought of himself as a natural philosopher, what we would now call ...”

“... be the result of the greater seriousness and scale of the undertaking. But there is a good deal of self-criticism in the press, and evidence of a bad conscience about the country’s absurd dependency on cheap oil and on the political arrangements necessary to guarantee it. I think, also, that there is a vague impression that Arab nationalism might have a ...”

“... and indignation at his treatment by the establishment, continued to exhibit a rare and often self-deprecatory wit. Consider his account of the start, in 1827, of his life-long passion for Shakespeare: ‘As I came out of Hamlet, shaken to the core by the experience, I vowed I should not expose myself a second time to the flame of Shakespeare’s genius ...”

“... prince is looking for a princess. His ageing mother clearly won’t do for the part. Blinkered by self-absorption, he is not prepared to notice on his return form Paris signs of the heart disease which abruptly ends Mrs Percy’s patient life. Lewis is devastated, and bewildered. His educated idealism has not adapted him for domesticity and grief. ‘Life ...”

“... callow Yankee ornithologist, a mild obsessive with a strong sense of timing and no instinct of self-protection whatever; he goes where the bird song calls him and reports his experiences with what seems like false naivety but may be the expression of genuine innocence. His previous book was a collection of random if passionate notes on owl sightings in ...”

“... then, and tells us that avoiding it has become a preoccupation now. Nevertheless, behind his self-castigation a certain complacency seems to lurk. The impression may partly be created by the mature Julian’s intermittent reflections on life in general: these tend towards a weary fatalism of tone which in turn creates an exonerating context for the ...”

“... passage about ‘the workmanship of the understanding’ (earning for Locke Nelson Goodman’s self-description as ‘constructionalist’). In a paper published some years ago Ayers seemed to concede that with the advent of chemistry and molecular biology we had found inner constitutions – and so Locke, writing what was valid in his day, is no longer ...”

“... for women. Family resources enabled her to acquire a university education, and she was financially self-sufficient throughout her long career. A friendship with George Gissing (they corresponded at least once a week for ten years) admitted her to a world of artistic achievement. She embodies the independence of the new woman. Yet she emerges from Jane ...”

“... listened for. The O is both something and nothing, origin and omega, mother and rooted sense of self. Heaney consigns himself to living with its equivocations, in the fullness of absence. The haw is not a lantern, but he will live by its light, ‘its pecked-at ripeness that scans you, then moves on’. The round O’s in the book evoke maternity, ...”

“... puzzlement or blankness can be her only response. She has immense physical resilience and self-confidence, an alarming urge to dominate, and a combative and powerful presence. But she is also uninformed, endlessly self-deceived and, though by no means unintelligent, seemingly incapable of intellectual reflection or ...”

“... currencies are under discussion. The identity of nations is being constructed in acts of symbolic self-affirmation which are also gestures of puzzled self-discovery. The future shape of political structures in the Baltics is coloured by the ease with which independence was won. In Lithuania independence has proved the ...”

“... intertwined (as church and state came to be in Christendom); co-optation made the party too self-perpetuating, too little self-critical; and where the comforts of life were scarce, the temptation to use influence to get an unfair share was strong. The Party, like the Roman Church, became too rich, and was no longer ...”