“... two hundred years it has been impossible to speak of nationalism ... socialism and democracy, of self-determination for peoples and nations, of government by law and of the belief in human rights ... of ‘the people’s’ demands, of ... ‘secular’ education, political propaganda and the state’s role in promoting ‘enlightenment’, of popular ...”

“... The colour shots are very striking, in a Tokyo-printed, fat-magazine kind of way; that slightly self-conscious excellence of serious investment lurking behind a noble topic – ‘Life’, ‘Time’, ‘Nature’, one of those single-name enterprises. The gourmet layout freezes your attention for a moment, but then you have to keep the pages flicking to ...”

“... The Knowledge of Ignorance: From Genesis to Jules Verne (1985), so there is a certain amount of self-repetition. Martin sets out both to suggest that Verne’s voluminous oeuvre is emblematic of all fiction and criticism, and to draw an engaging portrait of literary monstrosity. If these narratives are the product of a ‘literary brontosaurus’, they also ...”

“... threat to Israel’s existence. For all these reasons, Shamir is an apostle not of peace but of self-reliance, of a consolidated Israeli presence on the West Bank, of a build-up in Israel’s military strength, and of steadfastness in relation to international pressures. The Likud leader and his colleagues do not accept the basic formula of exchanging ...”

“... forced her children to hate him; she was rightly ostracised by her neighbours for her disdainful self-righteousness; she ‘cruelly victimised’ her hapless rival, Jessie Chambers; and so the character-assassination goes on. Meyers portrays Lydia as a toxic personality; and because she set out to dominate everyone around her, it was only rough justice when ...”

“... and limited in high-society life by her extreme short-sightedness. To her, Sarah’s wit, looks, self-confidence and evident female success seemed dazzling, and she developed a crush on her of almost schoolgirl intensity. In November 1688, when William of Orange landed in England to oust Anne’s father, King James II, the Marlboroughs seized their ...”

“... and the Post Office, and his account is particularly dense in that important area. He is the most self-denying of the three where speculation is concerned. Where there is no hard evidence, Super says nothing. Unlike the other two, he gives comprehensive summaries of the novels, and his narrative organisation is chronological and highly segmented. As a ...”

“... house in the Rue des Mimosas in suburban Brussels, Jonathan Miller took off into one of his self-intoxicating fantasies. We were there together in the mid-Sixties to make a film for the BBC, and although I had forewarned him, Jonathan couldn’t believe that this overstuffed furniture, this aviary of china birds, these chiming clocks, garish oriental ...”

“... or death. To be sure, there are no obvious Lenins, Hitlers or even Mussolinis on the horizon: the self-confessed candidates, like Vladimir Zhirinovsky of the Liberal Democratic Party or Generals Makashov and Sterligov who position themselves within the ‘Red-Brown’ coalition of Communists and nationalists, are risible to most Russians and are made to seem ...”

“... overly victim-conscious. He was beginning ‘to distrust political indignation in general and the self-righteousness of the extreme left in particular’. Meanwhile, what of Cristian Huneeus? From his correspondence, Gould learned that he had become involved with the magazine Mundo Nuevo – a South American version of Encounter, quietly sponsored by the ...”

“... although I doubt whether he is a believer, he has at times a kind of mechanical nonconformist self-righteousness about him.’ Others called him the Scoutmaster General. This was, of course, the golden age of another Congregationalist, Harold Wilson. Though his much misunderstood resignation from the Attlee Government in 1951 had identified him as a ...”

“... means productions, but he could be read as proposing also the need for experimental, i.e. self-conscious and ironic and non-literal, interpretations] are justified today; only what injures the Wagner orthodoxy is true. The defenders of the grail shouldn’t get so worked up about it; Wagner’s precise instructions exist and will continue to be handed ...”

“... over public expenditure, tax cuts, nationalism, “Victorian Values” (of the Samuel Smiles self-help variety), privatisation and a dash of populism.’ And the wrong definition? Why, of course, ‘whatever Margaret Thatcher herself at any time did or said’. She was, admittedly, ‘the indispensable element of the revolution which so astonished ...”

“... of her fondness for motorcycling ‘rough trade’); yes, in spite of being a very publicly self-confessed Christian, she was married to a divorced alcoholic who worked on the News of the World, but, Barbara Reynolds genuinely makes us feel – so what? This is not really the heart of Sayers or – to use Reynolds’s title – her ‘life and ...”

“... so fast that steelworkers, coalminers or welders must themselves abandon lifetime proclivities, self-images and workplace companions to acquire demanding new skills – on penalty of chronic unemployment or unskilled low-wage labour – failure and frustration are the likely results. To be sure, nothing could be more old-hat than to worry about the travails ...”