“... 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 ...”

“... this a precocious understanding of the value of the autographed work; or a piece of metaphorical self-dismemberment?) What she wants now is to become a hybrid of Flip and the land artist Robert Smithson, who made his mark on Utah’s topography with his immense coiling earthwork, Spiral Jetty. As Reno explains to her New York boyfriend, Sandro Valera (an ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... in holy orders: ‘They were the last people you would expect to be converted to the cause of self-pampering.’ Whatever the reason for their failure, the history of the Cambridge baths is a nice case of the ambivalence of the modern world’s engagement with the ancient. It shows the combination of enthusiasm and lack of interest, learned reconstruction ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... written by submariners explain how US submarines ‘really’ won the war at sea. The American self-image is so much identified with technological mastery, it seems self-evident that superior weapons and equipment must have been the key to success then as now. The new US submarines introduced in 1941 were certainly well ...”

“... emerged in the behaviour of populations, and might eventually lead to a form of large-scale self-organisation. The best way of ensuring this happened was to build a communications infrastructure that would make it possible for millions of people to share information in real-time. In Hayek’s view, that infrastructure was the price system of a free ...”

“... means absolute – tendency to increased brain size, more flexible behaviour, an enlarged sense of self, and autobiographical memory. Bigger brains require larger skulls, more easily balanced by being placed on the top of the body, favouring an upright posture with no need for a tail as a counterbalance. So the evolution of humanoid creatures could perhaps ...”

“... factors. One of Walser’s greatest stories, ‘Kleist in Thun’, is the lightly disguised self-portrait of a conflicted writer wrestling with his demons. ‘It is as if radiant red stupefying waves rise up in his head whenever he sits at his table and tries to write,’ Walser says of Kleist. ‘He curses his craft.’ At some point, the act of ...”

“... There are​ self-trained artists; then there are self-willed ones. Edward Burne-Jones, like Vincent Van Gogh, was one of the latter. That’s to say, he decided, in 1855, to be an artist – he was studying for a theology degree at Oxford at the time – without knowing whether he was capable of being one, perhaps even without considering absence of talent a potential obstacle ...”

“... interested in memory loss per se; she is interested in what it’s like to have one’s sense of self fundamentally change. Before his injury, Toby never had to scrutinise himself. He was effortlessly charming and persuasive. ‘I never thought much about my, my personality before,’ Toby tells Hugo. ‘But when I did, I took it for granted that it was ...”

“... sick with a cough and a temperature. By the end of the week, she has recovered, but we ask her to self-isolate for 14 days.5 March. The UK records its first death from Covid-19. In London, there have been four confirmed cases.7 March. I spend five hours in the middle of the day with the choir I run in Highbury in north London, rehearsing for a concert at the ...”

“... years earlier. Whenever the date appears in his narrative, which is often, Paul becomes trapped in self-pity about the unfair burden it has placed on him. Politically charged birthdays run through Grass’s fiction: Walter Matern in Dog Years, for example, shares his date of birth with Hitler. In fact, Im Krebsgang continues the history told in the ‘Love ...”

“... distaste for emotional display and always had one eye on his ‘cynical’ or commonsensical self-presentation. And this sometimes made things difficult for his admirers. Douglas soaked up their praise as if it meant not very much, got ratty when his work was criticised on technical grounds or found to be insufficiently ‘poetic’, and altogether made ...”

“... and dispassionate in its logic. It was wrong that the Palestinians were not being prepared for self-government. It was wrong that Palestine had not been granted a seat in the United Nations and wrong, too, that it had been debarred from joining the Arab League. The Arab population was already suffering economically and socially from the effects of Jewish ...”