“... Gandhi?’ ‘No, Kasturbabai Gandhi’, embarrassing all by invoking the Mahatma’s small, self-effacing, long dead wife – was seen in the stands, sitting next to Marshneill Gavaskar, grinning because she could see herself on television. She smiled; and waved – at whom, no one, among the millions watching, knew. During the 35th over, by which time ...”

“... preferment, he seems to have known from his thirties on that he was likely to become Pope, and as self-confidence grew into certainty, he developed a feline narcissism, a self-conscious and often exhibitionist piety. As a precocious Papal nuncio in Germany, he had the bad luck to run headlong into the terror of the 1919 ...”

“... Many are written but few survive. They are too often catalogues of games lost and won, or merely self-congratulatory. And they only rarely connect to the wider world. Addicted, however, emphatically connects to the wider world. For this book, as is now well known, is about two addictions: football and drink – and both are treated with remarkable ...”

“... seems to play an important role. Instead, it offers a window onto the remarkable battles between self-confident scientific dogmas which raged across Europe at the end of the 19th century – and which continue today. When professional scientists write books about past heroes, they often have a contemporary aim in view. Cercignani is no exception. He is an ...”

“... it.’ Again, the interest of the book is in these field reports, but it also lies in Seabrook’s self-analysis, as he graphs this ‘tectonic shift’ in culture on the fly. What are the bearings that Seabrook takes? Even though he is a self-declared ‘hegemonoculous’ (a wonderful-horrible appellation meant as a homage ...”

“... their enormous services to the subject, all these scholars positively crowed with nationalistic self-satisfaction.’ Moreover, the multicultural Davies crows, none of them gained a reputation outside the English-speaking world. They were mired in a mental framework that simply could not conceive of a world which did not place the greatest ...”

“... me that most of the people I’ve talked to from this kind of lunatic background incline towards self-pity and self-abuse. There’s a loneliness involved in survival, in the kind of class-changing that involves disowning, and in some way despising one’s own family and saying, at least for a while: I hate you, I’ll ...”

“... it in their guts. Such a turning can be made only by a comprehensive constitutional effort – a self-reform in which, incidentally, the UK crown and royal family now has a minor role. It has to extend from reform of the parliamentary system to a reconciliation with the Aboriginal population. That was the point of Germaine Greer’s recent admirable polemic ...”

“... as saving, for example. In the tradition of Adam Smith, this proposal relies more on national self-interest than on virtue, and would need relatively little international co-operation to function. But more often Stiglitz’s reforms ask for permanent international bureaucracies to be set up: a judicial body to determine whether trade barriers are ...”

“... a collector or connoisseur. In the middle of this peculiar book Clark drifts from the diarist’s self-communion to an after-dinner speech to old comrades and delivers his ‘inevitable 1960s anecdote’. Standing on the steps of the National Gallery, at the ‘edge of a demonstration’, he discusses ‘the (sad) necessity of iconoclasm in a revolutionary ...”

“... conundrum of his popularity, but biography – with its focus on the conscious and acting self – just isn’t the best optic through which to examine that question. Of course, Taylor ‘made’ his media career, and Wrigley’s tales of his canny pursuit of publishers and Burk’s columns of figures show how he did it, but a certain media culture ...”

“... A few of my own complaints: Krauss has written beautifully (in Bachelors, 1999) about the self-portrait photography of the Surrealist Claude Cahun; in a book already in danger of scanting women artists active before the 1960s, the omission of Cahun is striking. It is odd, too, given the book’s pervasive interest in the impact of Freudianism on the ...”

“... based on the fact that I was prepared to listen to such people.’ Not a very sensible thing for a self-styled elder statesman to say. Paul Scheffer, a left-wing columnist with political ambitions who became famous by taking a very public stance against multiculturalism, grew quite excited when Michael Ignatieff’s name came up in his conversation with ...”

“... the miner in ‘The Closing down of Summer’, ‘I must always be careful of sloppiness and self-indulgence lest they cost me dearly in the end.’ This could serve as MacLeod’s own manifesto: a declaration in favour of absolute simplicity, one opposed to the whole idea of ‘literariness’. The paradox is that the spareness of MacLeod’s style is ...”

“... American reputation. For the first third of this slim book, his tone alternates between fond self-mockery of his youthful passion for Allende and a bristling defence of ‘that momentous point’ in the history of Chile and indeed the world: ‘For many millions around the world, Chile briefly shined as a beacon of inspiration. It gave life to the notion ...”