“... not distinctly memorable, either for good qualities or bad. They are not posturing, or false, or self-indulgent, or vicious in language: but there is no particular reason why any of them should be read a second time. Why is it that his critical comments, especially the negative ones, stick so much more sharply in the memory? It is not that they are ...”

“... ambition nor the measure of his failure. As genre, this is a kind illustration of the importunate self-advertisement found in young poets. As something more than genre, it reminds us of the long-lived idea that a studious application to high art was always a reliable inspiration. This Mulready learned in the Royal Academy, which he joined early and served ...”

“... granted. Men are allowed, indeed conditioned, to deceive themselves to the end, and are loved as self-deceivers. Women have their resource – the romantic imagination. This faculty, which Jane Austen (and James Joyce, for that matter) considered so destructive, is the secret ‘richness’ of Barbara Pym’s heroines. ‘Richness’ is a favourite word. It ...”

“... this out of the libraries and into the home. Skip the campaign biographies: they are by definition self-serving, and by tradition footloose with mere fact (Reagan’s 1976 effusion had Britons committing suicide in the queues for National Health Service beds). The red meat, though in highly indigestible form, is here. The candidate’s name is nowhere ...”

“... and to the whole later story of psychosexual development? How decisive in this connection was his self-analysis, following the death of his father? Neither Ernest Jones nor Mr Clark had the means of answering this question: the available evidence is not sufficient. Mr Clark puts great emphasis on Freud’s determination, from the beginning of his professional ...”

“... combining the commonplace idea of the cannibalising of life by art with the idea of his physically self-consuming life as a writer. In 1906 he wrote to his brother Stanislaus: ‘Wurrak is more dissipating than dissipation.’ The two were, for him, intimately connected. The Rolling Stone assignment brought with it its own threat of physical dissipation for ...”

“... Rockefeller. Apart from politics, religion seems to get the best showing. A spiritual life of self-abnegnation is on the face of it a paradoxical means of acquiring fame, but the two French girls, Bernadette (‘shy, reticent, frail and poor’) and Thérèse of Lisieux (‘natural holiness – a conscious attempt to reach the ideals of ...”

“... of Mannerist ideals. But for a Venetian it was a logical development of traditional concerns, a self-confident response to an alien fashion. This interpretation implies that painters in Venice were able to think about what they were doing in a rather sophisticated way. It is generally assumed, however, that they were an unintellectual lot – inspired but ...”

“... claims of chemotherapists and immunotherapists. The book is highly personal in tone with repeated, self-congratulatory references to Dr Israel’s own work and to that of his colleagues and friends. The language is often imprecise and the arguments ill-ordered, and it is difficult to agree with Susan Sontag’s statement on the front cover that it is ‘by far ...”

“... and who formed the backbone of Edgbaston society, cultivated education and the arts in their own self-conscious way, and developed an ethos which was often in deliberate contradiction to that of the class of Lord Calthorpe, the landlord who had made it all possible. The high noon of Victorian prosperity, which was also the golden age of Edgbaston, saw the ...”

“... The author of The Founder of Diabolism, Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, was sentenced to three years for self-publishing and distributing a minor erotic work.There is a funny video clip imagining a young BL writer who has just passed the civil service exam seeking advice from a female lawyer:Writer: Can I continue writing sexy BL stories while working for the ...”

“... and writers about how to square up to it: at one extreme, miraculous feats of geo-engineering and self-imposed limits on climate-harming activity; at the other, massive investments in renewables to offset undiminished consumerism; between the two a range of positions including a plea for degrowth. This long conversation gave breadth and urgency to NLR’s ...”

“... The paintings of old people. The paintings of boys and young men. The paintings of old women. The self-portraits, the genre groups. I paid attention to the characterful frames, a wonderfully diverse array, some of them like no frames I have ever seen. I went back to my favourites, then round those pieces I thought I might have overlooked. My favourites ...”

“... late Sixties in order to record and illustrate what he calls ‘the professional transformation of self’. He presents a disturbing picture of the process of indoctrination. The trainee physician, educated in the mould of a traditional medical school with its strong biological approach to disease, finds himself confronted by patients whose disorders cannot be ...”

“... magic may have declined, what a magical word ‘revolution’ is. In a more or less stable but self-critical modern culture it is pregnant with easy excitement, and Hill conjures with it as with the philosopher’s stone, thus gilding his cloudily ambitious claims. But discussion of the intellectual influence of 1640-60 depends on the character that is ...”