“... unto themselves. At the same time, their expressive language is for the most part pretty self-evident. With the exception of the few black shapes that made their appearance at the start and the end of her painting life, Martin’s palette is airy and light – neither heavy nor dark – and it’s no stretch to associate this with the classicism she ...”

“... base. And then, in 2013, in the aftermath of the hacking scandal and the failures of press self-regulation, the queen in council imposed a royal charter on self-regulation of the press. The Privy Council remains an important instrument of governmental business, though it is now essentially a mechanism by which ...”

“... the work as a whole was ‘nearly the most worthless’ ever published. Croker also alleged self-serving embellishment, perhaps even fabrication. His charges were reinforced when the heirs of the famous bluestocking Mary Delany – a cherished mentor of Burney’s who had corresponded with Richardson and Swift – accused her of lying, and made caustic ...”

“... of invisible boundaries recurs later in the book, this time in a different key. Frank, even in his self-imposed exile, remains attached to the rituals of suburban masculinity, chief among them the keeping of an immaculate garden. He’s frustrated by a persistent bald spot on the lawn and fences it off, scolding their dog whenever she gets too ...”

“... in the Maghreb. One device in the novel misfires: Gaddafi has an attachment to Van Gogh’s self-portrait with a bandaged ear. Khadra introduces this early on, in order to set up an unsuccessful parting shot: the dying rais remembers his mother telling him, when he was a boy, that he was deaf to reason in one ear, while the other listened only to ...”

“... economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton in a paper published in 2015. These deaths are the result of self-inflicted violence, either suicides or drug and alcohol overdoses (‘poisonings’ in the language of the report), particularly affecting white Americans living in the parts of the country that voted overwhelmingly for Trump – the South, the ...”

“... Nietzsche thought had vanished from the earth.’ It is a stirring peroration and one whose self-declared ‘pessimism’ and sober wisdom read all the more persuasively in the light of public events, seven years on from the essay’s initial appearance in New Left Review. If – once again – I call its direction of travel ‘odd’, it is because I ...”

“... black silk doublet, an outfit pegged somewhere between modesty and ostentation. He fixes us with a self-assured gaze; there is the trace of a smile. He holds a pair of soft gloves; a later portrait, in which he looks more like a courtier, has him clasping a purse, suggesting the precariousness of riches as much as their importance. Analysis of this second ...”

“... be a world of panel discussions, graduate student workshops, grant applications, affect theory and self-help jargon. Late in the book she makes a parenthetical observation about academia, ‘a field known for articulating liberatory possibilities in language that often excites little to no felt sense of them’. The verb ‘perseverate’ keeps appearing, so ...”

“... to offer. The US was caught on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, as a proud promoter of self-determination, it wished to identify itself with anti-colonialism. On the other, it felt obliged to show solidarity with Britain, which was the archetypal imperial power and a valued partner in the Cold War. In attempting to satisfy both requirements, the US ...”

“... Artemidorus wrote, ‘is a sign that our spirit admonishes and foretells us affectionately the self same thing worthy to be thought upon.’ I appreciate the gentleness of that ‘affectionately’; some of my own consultations become shared reflections on what recurring dreams might mean. A patient with a recurring bad dream may choose to suppress it ...”

“... a place to which people have been running for years, whether to escape or to find some invented self. After the reading I took questions. Then the moderator announced that there was time for only one more question. A woman, who had been standing the whole time at the end of the large room, with her back to the wall, spoke. ‘I am Syrian,’ she said. ‘I ...”

“... categories that defined artistic practice in her lifetime. There was no widespread tradition of self-portraiture in 16th-century Italy, despite the fact, as Michael Cole writes, that it is often seen as a defining feature of Renaissance art. Sofonisba made more images of herself than any other artist in the century between Dürer and Rembrandt. These ...”

“... upbringing; there is a suggestion, in turn, that Miller’s confused sexuality and lack of self-control are consequences of his mother’s emotional abuse. Trauma, for Wallace, is a family inheritance: his grandmother believed that his mother’s rape, from which his older brother was conceived, was her own fault – she ‘got what she had ...”

“... of birds.The concept of body ownership is premised on dualism: the idea that one’s thinking self can exercise rights over one’s material self. This too is historically particular. In early modern Europe, mind and body were understood to be mingled, and this was a source of anxiety when it came to gestation. A ...”