“... to the billboards put up by the authorities in an attempt to create an atmosphere of national self-improvement. ‘Be your brother’s keeper,’ one urges. ‘Total reconciliation before 2024.’ Others instruct a dispossessed public – the Red Cross estimates 80 per cent of the population has been displaced by the fighting – to go back and farm the ...”

“... the 1848 Revolution as a ‘parody’ of 1793 in which the guillotine ‘plagiarised’ its former self; the Revolution of 1793, acted out by men, was mimicked in 1848 by monkeys. Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire draws on similar metaphors of repetition and parody, though Marx had little time for Hugo’s Châtiments because ‘Hugo contents himself with bitterly ...”

“... Jean Arp, Sonia Delaunay and the Bauhaus. Indeed, by the time he moved to Paris, he was a self-declared abstract artist. The portraits of Jeannine, with which the recent Beaubourg exhibition opened, and which reveal the influence of El Greco and Blue Period Picasso, were now a thing of the past.Up to 1946, when for the first time it takes on a ...”

“... was peculiarly a product of its time. Her childhood in Rome was marked by a spirit of defiance and self-dramatisation, and a growing desire to re-create herself as something brilliant against the solid, somewhat dreary backdrop of her parents’ respectable social round. She dressed up in old clothes she found in the attics of the Palazzo Corsini, and became ...”

“... that he seems increasingly to have felt at any use of the Eddic myths, as being alien to his self-consciously English models, and even dangerously pagan. In any case, the danger element in the myths, as Tolkien saw at an early date, was not exactly racism, of which there is little original trace, but the heroic world-view that some scholars chose to ...”

“... Resolution 181’s affirmation of the right of Palestine’s Arab population to national self-determination was based on normative law and the democratic principles that grant statehood to the majority population. (At the time, Arabs constituted two-thirds of the population in Palestine.) This right does not evaporate because of delays in its ...”

“... river. Mabey’s essays, which begin from his own experience, are sometimes Schama-like in their self-indulgence, sometimes useful oral history, as in his accounts of managing his own small wood and of the great storm of 1987. He gives a lively if brief account of the economic history of the Chilterns and ecological history of the New Forest, and sets about ...”

“... is compatible with modern scholarly understandings of Cyrus’ actions, which point to rational self-interest – not least his desire to put friendly allies on the road to Egypt (eventually conquered by his son Cambyses). Isaiah himself says that Cyrus doesn’t acknowledge or even know the god of Israel. But the fact that Cyrus isn’t a believer makes ...”

“... when I was 18 and he was 55. I was twenty when I started sitting for him. I was a very romantic, self-conscious young woman. My voluptuousness (as Lucian described my curves) gave me a maternal air. I offered the notion of comfort to Lucian, which he felt badly in need of. But the intimacy that evolved between us was a challenge for him. He was threatened by ...”

“... tanks are not rolling. The aircraft are not bombing. Children venture out. Inhabitants return from self-imposed exile. And the reaction in Israel? Dancing in the streets? Applause for the prime minister and the minister of defence, who at long last have come to their senses? Not at all. The nation is appalled: where, it asks, is our victorious army? The people ...”

“... much hope of footprint along this grey and narrowed fringe that thinks that irony’s a cop-out, a self-serving way of giving in. I want a meta-poem, stripped and dull: ‘Scene. Polemic. Memorial.’ 15. Fat Helmie clears his stall. Late morning walkers dodge his spray. It pushes up the blood-stained ice to ruffs of tawny cod intestines. The sound of cups ...”

“... over themselves to please Europeans whom they take to be nostalgic for the certainties of the self-contained nation state. The French government has cancelled plans to allow non-European residents to vote in local elections; Iain Duncan Smith is trying to drum up support for restricting freedom of movement within the EU. All over the continent, we are ...”

“... form a face in profile. It is recognisably the face of Marcel Duchamp, especially if you know his Self-Portrait in Profile, from 1957. Ai made Hanging Man in 1985, two years into a decade-long stay in New York, where he abandoned painting and fell under the spell of Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and of course Duchamp: ‘The most, if not the only, influential ...”

“... style of saying you’re doing the opposite of what you’re really doing. ‘He never complained. Self-pity is not in George Bush’s DNA,’ we read on the first page. We’re also told that Dad never brags. What follows is a litany of boasts and grievances. The first string of feats: the Phi Beta Kappa key and star turn on the baseball team at Yale and the ...”

“... plants produce millions of SWU per year. To make present and future Iranian nuclear power plants self-sufficient would require a giant expansion of capacity. But here’s the problem. I’ve said that the critical mass of U-235 required to make a bomb is 52 kilograms. But with good design only about half this amount is actually needed. It takes about 232 SWU ...”