“... worldwide democratic revolution was ‘irresistible’, he ultimately thought democracy inherently self-destructive, and the pursuit of equality a form of false consciousness. As democracy progressed, true liberty would inevitably vanish along with the aristocrats who were its best defenders, and only ‘soft despotism’ would remain, in a society dominated ...”

“... breathless, hypnotic novel of the Autonomist struggles of the 1970s (Autonomia was a self-organising – no unions or party affiliations – working-class resistance movement): ‘I get hit on the arm I feel a shooting pain I look round but there’s such confusion that I can’t tell who did it … the PCI militants turn up in droves more and ...”

“... unfamiliar in England, does not appear in the text, but the prejudice of the main character, a self-educated forewoman in a sweet factory, goes beyond ‘jingoistic sentiments … paraded in the music hall and the public house’, Glover writes. ‘Here is an anti-semitism that is ready to leave the street corner for the political platform, to make its ...”

“... Therapy, they read like the occasional, mostly unrevised thoughts of a smart, self-conscious, possibly depressed young American; they can be tiring to read, but are sometimes quite funny. ‘i want to start a band’ expresses the will to power behind that desire: ‘i want my guitarist to be my jealous girlfriend/and i want my drummer to ...”

“... aged 57, in 1977. The Brazilian writer and her characters had always been close, and it seems that self and creation had finally merged in her mind. Others had already made the connection. After she left her husband in 1959, he poured out his regrets to her in a letter that addressed her as both of the women in her first novel – the untamed, amoral Joana and ...”

“... styles were adopted unknowingly by their producers and consumers. During the 1970s irony and self-consciousness began for the first time significantly to shape the behaviour of both groups. In 1971 … even Vogue asked if bad taste was a bad thing. The following year, magazine-of-the-moment Nova … coaxed readers to ‘let your bad taste out for an ...”

“... occasions when competent and ruthless kings rebuilt it (Edward III, then Henry V), infuriatingly self-indulgent kings lost it (Richard II, then Henry VI). The uselessness of the two latter monarchs had led to their murder by ambitious would-be replacements; nobility had been so unimpressed by the victims’ performance on the throne that they stood aside and ...”

“... Britain”’ prevails, the arc will have to go its own way, leaving the centre to its English self. Britannophiles insist this is a backward step, a return to the age of nationalism rather than an emergence from it. Of course it is. But it is one forced on the periphery by central failure: by the Brownite determination to conserve an archaic ...”

“... as Feathers’s does. He administers the same law, but handles the insignia of their class more self-consciously, as if he can’t afford to be as casual as Feathers (whose gruff self-forged savoir faire is reminiscent sometimes of Tietjens’s in Ford’s Parade’s End). Veneering’s voice makes Feathers ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... lack of interest in this sort of thing is that it descends down to printers and publishers: it is self-fulfilling. But did Rastell’s biography and subject matter entangle with a sense of an emerging vernacular vitality? The Stationers’ Company is an expression of a quantity of archival labour and expertise that may never be surpassed: it is a great piling ...”

“... Joan Rivers (drawn in ink while talking to the gay writer Armistead Maupin, and therefore not self-consciously posing), Rita Hayworth, Natalie Wood, Marlene Dietrich (drawn while posing, clearly), Simon Callow, John Gielgud and Ian McKellen. (My husband, David, incidentally, is related to Dietrich – on his mother’s side.) The screenwriters don’t ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... movement, which encouraged Hindus and Muslims to come together to burn foreign goods and demand self-rule. ‘Their thirst for conquest is endless,’ Siraj says at one point of ‘the foreigner’. In 1908, the myth of the Black Hole was emphatically put in its place by a student of Akshaykumar Maitreya, who wrote: We do not believe that there ever ...”

“... in 301 he sent in his stepson Magas as military governor; in 275 Magas rebelled, and ruled as the self-appointed king of Cyrenaica from 275 to 250. We well may wonder how such a démarche affected Callimachus. A citizen of Cyrene with a government-sponsored job in Ptolemaic Egypt clearly had to watch his step, and not solely on account of intermittent ...”