“... He has changed the name of the former French colony, previously known as Upper Volta. He favours self-reliance over foreign aid. His revolution, he often says, requires discipline and commitment. It is backed by the overwhelming majority: all being well, they will become the architects of their own happiness. ‘Dare to invent the future,’ he ...”

“... it in The Language of Autobiography, that occurs when the autobiographer sees their written self suddenly cohere. The place condenses into the image; nothing more can be seen now. Vilhelm Hammershøi’s ‘Montague Street in London’ (1906). My view of the British Museum is unlikely to change, though had Colin St John Wilson’s designs for a ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... economy giants, relies on those who deliver the services being legally classified as self-employed ‘independent contractors’ rather than ‘employees’, and thus not sharing the fundamental rights and job security afforded to other workers. A six-page manual underscores this. It prescribes, and proscribes, certain words: rather than ...”

“... of justice, and perhaps much else (assuming, that is, anything exists outside of this huge self-involved system). The men who appear in Young’s video seem at best peripheral figures, always subject to the speech and gaze of the judges, or stranded in passageways and vestibules. One fretful advocate looks as though he has been waiting there for ...”

“... and tangled bits of history and mythology hang in the air: spectacular but romantic defeat, self-congratulating hatred, the West, integration, much more. The film ends on a flag too: the flag of the United States, upside down, at first in colour, then frozen in black and shades of grey. Before that we have seen a discussion between the aforementioned ...”

“... are also risks. Living with Covid means every sore throat or runny nose is a quandary. Should I self-isolate and take a test right away or leave it for a day to see how the symptoms develop? Research virologists working with deadly pathogens run through the same mental calculations as the rest of us – they will often decide to shrug off a mild fever and ...”

“... peers, notably those of his ex-wife Emma Thompson. He does much better with Poirot. The element of self-pastiche is never far away, but it is very discreet, as is his supposedly Belgian accent – not realistic, of course, but not stealing the scene all the time either. He is athletic, gets into fights, clambers around the scaffolding of a dizzying alpine ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”