“... meditation on artistic susceptibilities. Martin has in part reconstructed a clinical scene: a self-declared mirror-touch synaesthete (here played by the Romanian actress Anamaria Marinca) is asked to watch objects and bodies gently slapped or palpated, and is quizzed on whether or where she feels anything in response. The result is a work that doesn’t ...”

“... any discernible paperwork. I have never met anyone more blithe about the contrast between their self-image and the facts of their life. He sees himself as an entrepreneur bringing a much needed service to market. He is helping people realise their dreams – it just so happens that these dreams involve extra-legal measures. Others see him as the villainous ...”

“... that ‘blacks were unfit for democracy, somehow too childlike or too unready or too incapable of self-governing.’ Bumiller doesn’t doubt the sincerity of these reflections on the road from Birmingham to Baghdad: ‘Rice spoke with such intensity and fervour that if she was exploiting history and her own life to make a dubious political point . . . it ...”

“... perfectly articulated group, lit with a strong sense of theatre – the saint has something of the self-consciousness of a player in a crime scene re-enactment. Batoni priced these pictures himself, and some were still on his hands when he died, the major assets of an estate that, reduced by his handsome style of living, could not meet the bequests made in his ...”

“... of infidels and Jews and determined to conquer the West, a civilisation gone soft, weakened by self-doubt, political correctness bordering on treason, and, worst of all, a ‘culture of denial’. Gilbert spells it out: In the 1930s, the danger of Nazism was there . . . but people thought, well, this is a German problem, it’s a limited problem ...”

“... of Rothko’s statements is now, and probably always was, an act of faith that requires a sort of self-hypnosis. ‘Red on Maroon’ (1959), section four of the Seagram mural. The series that dominates the exhibition, the Seagram murals, arose from a commission for paintings to line the walls of a private dining-room in the Four Seasons restaurant in ...”

“... Secret Agent (1974) for initiating the project, shortly after Orwell’s death in 1950. The self-aggrandising Hunt may have exaggerated his own importance in the operation – possibly inventing the juicy detail that Orwell’s widow, Sonia, was wooed with the promise of meeting her favourite star, Clark Gable – but, as detailed by Daniel Leab in ...”

“... Howard, racist football fans, the Mail) and several preening anecdotes, dressed up as self-deprecation. He once went to the help of a man who’d been mugged on Hampstead Heath. When the man realised who the good bloke who’d saved him was, he said: ‘You’re Alastair Campbell? I fucking hate you.’ In Waco, Texas, Campbell met in the hotel ...”

“... I did sit long enough among the jumpy pixellated images to feel, for a while, that there was a self-denying lesson implied – something along the lines that all art is a distraction from proper ...”

“... really the issue, is it? The issue is that the belief has gone – the sense of freedom, and of self-transportation – but at least cabin crews make less fuss about the information on the safety card, to say nothing of the helpful whistle that one can blow to attract ...”

“... it has taken over the slightly older Passmore Edwards Library next door. Passmore Edwards, a self-educated social reformer and newspaper proprietor, provided money for the gallery – he had funded other, similar buildings. He wanted his name on this one. Henrietta Barnett, the driving force behind the project, objected and what would, it seems, have ...”

“... under the footage of Boyle’s triumph. YouTube, you could say, is the depot for international self-realisation. Danny MacAskill, a young guy in Edinburgh who can do brilliant tricks on his mountain bike, gets himself filmed and somebody sticks it up on YouTube. Three million views. The young guy’s a legend. Andy McKee, a man who picks and slaps his ...”

“... runs until 5 April at the Val-de-Grâce military hospital in Paris. It is a cautious, self-regarding show about lives led in the Legion and famous legionnaires. As you’d expect, grizzled ex-Nazis flushing out the Viet Minh along the Red River Delta are downplayed. The Legion’s stars include the poet Blaise Cendrars, who joined in 1914, and the ...”

“... of what went wrong was blunt: ‘Civil servants are by their nature cautious. There is collective self-discipline and people wanting an easy life and becoming morally and intellectually lazy, so they just do what the minister wants.’ Now, of course, that minister is Boris Johnson, a man who has written of the ‘watermelon smiles’ of Congolese ‘tribal ...”

“... drew attention to it on his website and it was removed, has been borrowed back. There is something self-congratulatory in this demonstration that the museum can take a joke, like a headmaster at the end of term indulging high spirits as long as they don’t go too far. Now, when the age of Dissent has become the age of Taking Offence, there are limits. The ...”