“... it. The result also suggests that the conventional constraints upon government folly or self-deception no longer operate. Although I think there are certain things that even the present over-respectful electorate finds unacceptable – the Poll Tax is an obvious example – it is clear that the limits upon a Conservative government are now extremely ...”

“... enthusiasm for Wagner’s efforts to regenerate our country. We feast on compassion, heroic self-denial, Christianity, vegetarianism, Aryanism, southern colonies.’ Three years before, in Religion and Art, the composer had suggested that the emancipation of the Jews in 1871 was leading to a dreadful degeneration, and that this might be stopped by ‘a ...”

“... of itself. The Eighties have been one of the most significant decades of Scottish cultural self-definition in the past two centuries.’ And in that decade three major scholarly ventures – the New History of Scotland, People and Society in Scotland, and the Literary History of Scotland, 19 volumes in all – duly took off. These projects were ...”

“... are part of them, the bosses, and should be pulled down’). At once defensive yet assured, such self-scrutiny is a disarming feature of many of Bragg’s novels. Characters are constantly seeing themselves at one remove, and are prone to suffering from weird, out-of-body experiences: ‘the eye of his mind would slither from his head and regard what ...”

“... of this century to be survivors of the Ekaterinburg massacre: a parade of deluded people drunk on self-aggrandisement, shrieking for attention. Massie throws them up into the air like so many clay pigeons, watches the arc of their flight, and shoots them to pieces just as they near the earth. The story of Anna Anderson, the most plausible of the ...”

“... another voyeur? It was difficult not to see the bombing as retribution for the extraordinary self-promotion that brought the Olympics to Atlanta and, to the consternation even of American journalists, dominated the competition. In violation of Olympic protocol, only the US National Anthem was sung to open the games. Only Americans – Dennis Mitchell ...”

“... for a long time, perhaps for ever.’ Not long afterwards, I go to see Alexander Batanov, a smart, self-confident man in his thirties who has turned himself from an academic researcher into a political consultant. He has worked with Yuri Luzhkov, the mayor of Moscow, and helped engineer a public reconciliation between this wily former bureaucrat turned Mayor ...”

“... of the so-called reinvention of welfare now underway in Washington is to try and stop the apparent self-destruction of the inner-city family. But Bourgois discovers something a little different. Women have children on their own in East Harlem because the men – Primo and Caesar and others like them – are abusive, violent, disruptive and immature. In what is ...”

“... Constitution’s language raises such questions but does not provide answers. Nor is the document self-enforcing. Some provisions, like the free speech and equal protection clauses, were violated for decades before being invigorated in the 20th century. Others, like the guarantee of a republican form of government, have been entirely forgotten. During and ...”

“... fertility; others were used to mark senility (when pendulous), otherness (when circumcised) and self-control. They were a symbol as much for women as for men and figured in a number of women-only festivals in the form of phallic costumes and phallic cakes. Some care was taken to distinguish different kinds of penis in art, and a strong contrast seems always ...”

“... time, personal and external constraints in behaviour became impersonal and internalised, until self-control, in the form of a new ‘economy of instincts’, became automatic – a process akin to the one Weber describes in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, when a religiously rooted attitude to work gradually became detached from its ...”

“... difference between the Cook Islands and French Polynesia is political. The Cook Islands achieved self-government from New Zealand in 1965. After the oppressiveness of Tahiti, Rarotonga was like a breath of fresh air. It was gorgeous, too: extinct volcanic spires, their tips lost in drifting mists and clouds; jungle-clad slopes ending in white sandy ...”

“... as in ‘military drag’, ‘clerical drag’ – where cross-dressing is not involved. A self-consciousness is implied, and with it a consciousness of effect. Clothes are being used to underscore a particular choice of persona, and here the notion of choice is very important. We can choose just who we want to be and reinforce the choice by changing ...”

“... a level and left the fundamental problems unsolved’. ‘Too high a level’ was the level of self-reflection – knowledge of one’s states of consciousness. This leaves quite untouched the prior question of the nature of the mental states themselves – the pains, the tickles, the seeings of red, the smellings of roses. How do these spring from mere ...”

“... three resident Serbian families and one Croat. The Partisans may have carried the idea of local self-management down from the mountains with the ideological fervour of Marxists, but here power was still yoked to ethnicity. Ironically, a Jew saved Nikola Blazevic’s life. As railway superintendent, Blazevic had used his prior notice of plans for the ...”