“... rhythmically as the wheels ease into motion. The scene makes a gentle point about the perils of self-absorption with a minimum of fuss. From the start, Tati knew how to understate. François decides to freshen up between rounds by taking advantage of the facilities in the town’s Bureau de Poste. The washroom is an annexe to the main office, where his ...”

“... of plagues since the Middle Ages.Johnson’s insouciance goes hand in hand with his gargantuan self-confidence. So it’s not surprising that his reaction to these embarrassments has been to double down. Instead of standing back and letting better-qualified people make the decisions, Superman proposes, according to the Daily Telegraph of 3 June, to ‘take ...”

“... it’s difficult to tell what that means, except in contrast to Hunter’s muddled careerism and self-destructive hedonism. The portrait of Beau Biden that emerges from this book is that of a man who seems, from a young age, determined to become a more perfect version of his father, i.e. a more perfect politician. ‘My father believed Beau could one day be ...”

“... empire’s intention had always been to lead all its territories and races towards ‘responsible self-government’ and – conceivably – to independence.Such nonsense! It’s still humiliating that anyone accepted that bedtime story. As Ian Patel writes in We’re Here because You Were There, decolonisation ‘was from a British perspective ...”

“... to Charles occasionally extended into denunciations of kingship itself, but in the 1640s the self-professed detesters of monarchy never probed beyond their detestation. They did not trouble themselves with questions of constitutional architecture or wonder how to empower an alternative executive authority while preserving the liberties kingship allegedly ...”

“... he himself had devised. The form the NHS took was inspired, according to Bevan’s account, by the self-organised, free-at-the-point-of-use health service set up by workers in Tredegar, the small mining town in the Sirhowy Valley where he was born and raised, and where he began his political career. Although he had the backing of the prime minister, Clement ...”

“... church on the feast days of the saints they commemorate, they reveal a great deal about Christian self-presentation – and very little about Julian. There is no compelling evidence for a widespread persecution of Christians actively or personally prosecuted by Julian. Certainly an unknown number of Christians died for their faith. Some were murdered by those ...”

“... cannon fire during ‘our unhappy retreat from Russia’ – he remarked that ‘noble souls are self-sufficient, while others are frightened and run mad.’ Jonathan Keates, in his insightful biography, frequently refers to this ‘Moscow-courage’ that Stendhal showed at key moments in his life. There were two duels. There was a commendation for courage ...”

“... published a book ‘on the programme’s significance’ in 2017, Defining the Discographic Self. It even has its own urban myth, in which Brigitte Bardot tells Roy Plomley that she wants ‘a peenis’ for her luxury. Choking on his microphone he eventually realises she means ‘’appiness’. Bardot never appeared on Desert Island Discs – but ...”

“... Colombians in counterinsurgency techniques. In 1964, after a massive military attack against the self-proclaimed republic of Marquetalia, south of Bogotá, Manuel Marulanda Veléz and other members of the Communist Party escaped into the mountains, where they formed the FARC. Two years later – led by Marulanda, whose nickname was Tirofijo, or ...”

“... of the ocean’. Ghosn himself believed – or claimed to believe (he was capable of strategic self-deprecation) – that he had only a fifty-fifty chance of success. In October 1999, he presented his rescue plan in a rousing speech in Tokyo. As Hans Greimel and William Sposato show in Collision Course, Ghosn’s story was a chronicle of triumph and ...”

“... was punished by ingenious methods of shaming. The world of the ship was quickly defined, and self-contained. It took us only a day or two to set aside news of 11 September, much as Cook’s crew set aside news of riots in London and a looming war with America when they reached Batavia. In a journal entry recorded after he lost a third of his crew to ...”

“... of life on an Italian island to be discussed – and not infrequently duplicitous. Writing a self-confessed ‘fan letter’ to Britten about the premiere of Peter Grimes, he is also shooting off a note to the copyist Roy Douglas asking: ‘Did you see or hear “Grimy Peter”?’ Asperities about fellow composers are in plentiful supply. Tippett was ...”

“... that the plot confirms, while sensible figures within the text diagnose the ‘circles of self-reference’ and ‘echo chambers’ in which his mind wanders. Like the novel’s witchy madwoman, who is also a reader of occult signs, Lamb apparently possesses real powers of divination – powers that the novel never chooses to explain away. The ...”

“... anonymous personality’, whereby the painting would stand by and for itself, unsigned and self-free. It was all this, and all as high-minded as this; but it was also personal, playful, companionable. It was Braque teasing (and delighting) the dressy Picasso by buying him a hundred hats at a public auction in Le Havre; it was Buffalo Bill and ...”