“... rush of Tommy Morgan’s speech – a tumble of dialogue and incident – and the stately, more self-aware progress of Joan Poynder’s, in which ‘one’ deflects the possibility of disagreement. As well as a fairly predictable clutch of Cockney ‘aint’s’ and ‘cor blimey’s’, the upper-class liking for capacious derogatory adjectives ...”

“... everything. The earlier ones are sharper, more wittily observant of the astringencies and self-contradictions of the Scottish character. Yet even when he is at his most astringent the affection shows through. Some of the Scottish essays are simply evocations of a landscape, others are simply presentations of an idiosyncratic character. They have the ...”

“... and when she dies she is transmuted by Soueif into an object of reflection and reminiscence for a self-conscious narrator. This last gesture isn’t very convincing, as if the author had decided that she couldn’t leave Aisha to descriptive realism but at the last minute had to point out the presence of a significant narrative process. Fortunately, this bit ...”

“... an improbable-seeming name, perhaps, in this context – Menachem Begin’s White Nights. The self-excited, voyeuristic fervour of Norman Mailer’s reveries about crime and the nature of the criminal belong to another world entirely. Two final points. First: how foolish and dangerous it is, in thinking about the nature of the Soviet system, to minimise ...”

“... Designed as a sequel to Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy, it was an even more self-indulgent work, almost ignoring the philosophical tendencies and topics which had not greatly attracted my own interest. Nevertheless it has been well received, especially in the United States. An edition in paperback will soon be appearing in both ...”

“... would recount the story of the midnight confrontation with Profumo always in a shoulder-shrugging, self-mocking way: ‘My contribution was to type the statement.’ This was in character, for those who knew him better than I at the Telegraph claim that Deedes was inclined to run away from hard decisions of any sort. He seems to have the capacity both to ...”

“... the fern higher than our tents, growing among such beautiful trees. I could quite fancy my-self in a large English park.’ Given this acute sense of home, of what was left behind, it is all the more remarkable that Fanny Eden manages to order and express perceptions of her immediate surroundings with such energy, and even convert her occasional sense ...”

“... suggesting that Hamburg’s medical establishment clung to an exploded medical theory out of crude self-interest; nor is he postulating a Marxist notion of false consciousness: he is arguing – very convincingly – that medical conceptions are not autonomous, the sterile cultures of laboratories, but possess social roots and social functions. Koch had shown ...”

“... only in its engaging underlay of humour. Harriet is one of those narrators who are skilled in self-delusion, who make plain to the reader things they prefer not to acknowledge themselves – in this case, the rottenness of Crishi, who is on the make, and worse. (He is, in fact, a cad whose literary ancestors may include the central figure in Francis ...”

“... a quite large number of British citizens. To begin life in the working class, climb out of it by self-help and the educational ladder, and find oneself, in early adulthood, living in a world almost inconceivably different from that of one’s childhood: the familiar story was successfully told by Richard Hoggart thirty years ago, and it was a recurring topic ...”

“... Mary McCarthy ... (a shade slyly, Mrs Spark, after all a director in her own way, may here be self-indulgently thinking of some of her own old pals). He meditates the great turn of the times that may be upon us, and dreads God’s dreams because, unlike his, they are real. His solace is a black taxi-driver, with whom he cruises innocently at ...”

“... He remained basically a short-story writer, whose later works became increasingly literary and self-referential. He rewrote Marco Polo’s conversations with Kubla Khan in Invisible Cities, and, in If on a winter’s night a traveller, he produced a novel both containing and commenting on the first chapters of a whole series of imaginary novels. The ...”

“... Which also explains why Ismail Kadare is big in Italy and France (where he has lived in semi-self-imposed exile since 1990. The blurb says that he now divides his time between Paris and Tirana). Besides, it is unfair to judge his work in double translation: the English versions of his novels have been translated from translations into French by the ...”

“... field’ for a common American culture. Seeing themselves reflected through Rogers’s self-effacing eyes, Americans moved through Indian dispossession, war, depression and class struggle while remaining on familiar ground. In what Ray Robinson calls his mode of ‘polite but sly insult’, gentle mockery was inseparable from national ...”

“... try to implement the UN resolutions? No, because the Americans need us. Because, contrary to what self-righteous European columnists write, stability in the Middle East is not a necessity for the US. What are the lessons America can learn from Israel? First, that enormous damage was done when pictures from Sabra and Shatila were sent all over the world. So in ...”