“... of the National Guard then declared Paris a revolutionary commune, a democratic, equal and self-managing society. The Commune lasted just 72 days until the army, which was under the control of the Versailles government, fought through the defences. It ended in the ‘semaine sanglante’, with the soldiers massacring more than ten thousand Communards ...”

“... briefly?‘William and the Nasties’ is a clumsy attempt to satirise the rise of Nazism. Greedy self-interest is what motivates the Outlaws, together with the belief that the law will be on their side. According to William, ‘It’s not stealin’ when you’re nasties. It’s by lor if you’re nasties.’ Even I could see that this wouldn’t ...”

“... evade not only the public horrors they seem faintly to shadow, but more private intensities of self-contemplation: they work, in short, as ritual games and puzzles, effective by their exclusions – their interesting mix of violence and nullity the opium, perhaps, of the English rectory and manor-house during the troubled inter-war period. With an ...”

“... held for the murder of an American officer; the investigation takes him to Vienna and leads to a self-help organisation of former, much-wanted Nazis. All of which is perfectly sound, if expectable, and resourcefully peopled with actual as well as imaginary villains. Kerr is much more at home among the ruins than he was in the Reich. Where he still leaves me ...”

“... or religious matters of principle; rather they were between court factions motivated by self-interest and careerism. It was a belated application of the Namier method, which produced useful results in interpreting mid-18th century politics, and demolished the Whig interpretation. But the applicability of the Namier method to the early 17th century ...”

“... creature comforts are about the most they can hope for. Others again are queens. Few of them are self-deceivers. A doctor wrote stridently to the Observer, not long ago, to complain that the paper had been strident in warning of the danger to pregnancy of the drug Debendox. Because of this, he had had his ‘Sunday disturbed by a lengthy visit to an acutely ...”

“... portraits. But the full-face pose and earnestly questioning eyes are like those in Romantic self-portraits – those of David and Samuel Palmer, for example. Nearly all the Cartier-Bresson portraits are three-quarter face. The sitter does not acknowledge the camera. The depth of field is great: things close and far away can all be in focus, and there is ...”

“... discussing ‘false’ theories about it, one of which I admit to owning: that it is natural and self-generating, absent only if repressed; that it is artificially the result of accidental propagation of unnecessary ideas; that it is a misapplication of consciousness that should have been attached only to class; and that it is ‘the re-emergence of ...”

“... their roads to Damascus and, though the character of their conversions will vary, the degree of self-affirmation that results gives a new spirit and a new confidence to their practitioners. Where there is a respectable research tradition and a substantial corpus of associated literature, they no longer feel on the defensive. The emergence of younger ...”

“... of work: the minimum condition for polemic. Uncertainty about purpose and method tends to generate self-justifying attitudes of a mordantly conservative cast. For example, the anti-academicism flaunted by some reviewers clearly derives from their conception of themselves as efficient but discriminating middlemen. Academics are characterised as interposing ...”

“... there is no reason to believe that he or Hiaasen think humans are capable of much enlightened self-interest. So, while there are plenty of human deaths and maimings in Hiaasen’s books, bulldozed mangroves are what bring a glitter to the hard man’s eye and rage to his heart. When, in Skin Tight, a tree surgeon puts a mistake made by his brother (a ...”

“... character. As I read on, I got angrier: the manhours, the money that was wasted, the pettiness, self-importance and stupidity. Why should they have established a file on me? Of what importance to the US Government was my personal, political or professional life? Well, as they eventually seem to have found out, I was of no importance to them at all. And ...”

“... by Taika Waititi, the film’s director. It’s a wonderful idea to give Johannes this second self, the Hitler within, but we don’t get much out of it except our pleasure at Waititi’s antics, and when Johannes finally decides he no longer has space in his mind for the Führer, it isn’t because he has understood something about Nazism but because ...”

“... extras in a Hollywood epic – large, swarming, full of energy. They make Nosferatu’s mournful self-pity – it’s not easy living an eternal life, he says, and seems to regret his addiction to blood almost as much as he enjoys it – look very low-spirited by comparison. Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz in the Herzog movie) is sent to Transylvania to get ...”

“... a tribute to Duchamp and his readymades, but all I could see was Ai, and his bearishly huggable self. These were, more than anything else, performance pieces, pieces about the artist, especially in the last big room, which compellingly arrayed a series of 3D dioramas representing Ai’s 81-day imprisonment at a scale of 2:1: wax models of a miniature Ai ...”