“... father of New Historicism, Stephen Greenblatt made his professional reputation with Renaissance Self-Fashioning (1980); but it was Will in the World (2004), his biographical account of ‘How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare’ that won him a huge advance. The established facts of Shakespeare’s life are either disappointingly pedestrian (records of ...”

“... a whole. Breivik’s hero Fjordman has graduated from the web to the pages of the Aftenposten, a self-described ‘conservative-liberal’ newspaper. He’s also writing a book about Utøya, partly subsidised by a fellowship from the Fritt Ord Foundation, Norway’s most prestigious free speech organisation. Nygaard, who is now the chairman of PEN ...”

“... persuade themselves that they are up against “human nature” itself.’ Christians aiming at self-improvement need look only to themselves: ‘Spiritual riches cannot be there, unless they come from you alone.’ This was a tough doctrine; Brown argues that it might have had a particular appeal to a Christian upper class now exiled from Rome and eager to ...”

“... not in response to a trauma in his past. Child has said he was ‘determined to avoid the hero-as-self-aware-damaged-person paradigm’; there was to be ‘no tedious self-pity’. Reacher has savings in the bank, more qualifications than he needs to dig swimming pools or work as a bouncer at a strip club – as he ...”

“... who had won a scholarship to read history at Trinity, fitted naturally into this highly-strung, self-consciously aesthetic milieu. He got round the rule forbidding pianos in students’ rooms by buying an antique dulcitone, an instrument undreamed of by the college authorities, overspent his generous allowance on ‘an impractically huge Breton oak ...”

“... quite neatly. Besteiro was the dreamy idiot. Casado, who pulled him into the conspiracy, was the self-dramatising, self-obsessed moron. Paul Preston, author of The Last Days of the Spanish Republic, hits hard from his first page. ‘This is the story of an avoidable humanitarian tragedy that cost many thousands of lives ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... UK support Saudi Arabia would no longer be able to prosecute its war. MBS will be hoping that the self-interest of the British government and British arms manufacturers – helped along by Saudi-funded lobbying and soothing noises from his supporters in the press – will continue to trump all legal arguments. The other event, of course, was the killing of ...”

“... which meant ‘creating not just an economic border but increasingly a culture of national self-supply’. ‘The British nation’, in other words, now implied a society committed to protectionism, to exporting (‘Export or Die’ was the slogan) at the cost of sharply reduced imports, and to a universal welfare state that existed within a culture of ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... his studies, not least because his uncle had given him some writing to do (there’s a hint of self-justification here, as if he worries that Tacitus will suspect him of cowardice, or – almost as bad – a lack of curiosity). As the Elder Pliny was waiting to embark, he received a message from the wife of a friend who was trapped below the volcano, and ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... so long as nobody moved. Movement, clothed or unclothed, was another source of anxiety for the self-appointed guardians of public morals. Particularly troubling were the exotic dancers. ‘The dances of eastern women in the low haunts of Tunis and Rangoon’ were not, a ‘well known professor of dancing’ informed the Daily Chronicle, the sort of thing ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”