“... 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 ...”

“... the years of their relationship, his ego and ideology were buoyed up by Claretta, whose lack of self-doubt, to judge from the written record, was greater even than his. As love affairs go, theirs was very well documented. In addition to 318 letters which Mussolini wrote to her between 1943 and 1945 alone, Claretta left behind a vast correspondence and ...”

“... European gift. ‘Our fascination’ with ‘Oriental civilisations’ stirred Egypt’s political self-awareness ‘for good and for ill’, his book begins. Passive Egypt offered ‘only minor resistance’ to invasion and occupation, he claims, until 1952, when revolution placed its antiquities in Egyptian hands – ‘for better or worse’. This is ...”

“... Teddy Roosevelt wrote, ‘have upset their governments, have denied them the right of self-determination, and have made democracy within their limits not merely unsafe but non-existent.’ Wilson was, he thought, only making the world safe for hypocrisy. But despite Wilson’s readiness to treat the Americas as a privileged sphere for US ...”

“... having her opinions heard, but without the responsibility of an actual job.A private diary is a self-portrait, the speech delivered to the bathroom mirror, which does not always play so well outside. Swire has a Pooterish tendency to record her own best remarks and other people’s comments about her in a way that doesn’t always strike the reader as it ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... scenario, finds himself identifying with the idolatrous mob, he also admires Moses because of his self-control. He is an object of emulation for Freud because he does not take quick revenge on the idolators: he suffers their difference. This essay of Freud’s, written in 1913, clearly also refers implicitly to Jung’s defection; though, ironically, in this ...”

“... issued in December 1943 by the newly-formed Reed and Harris publishing house, with an outrageously self-praising blurb comparing the author with Rilke and Kafka. ‘The plain fact is that Mr Harris cannot write,’ A.D. Hope observed, before going on to charge the young firebrand with plagiarism: ‘We have a Zombie, a composite corpse, assembled from the ...”

“... opinion which should have formed their natural constituency. ‘Flunkeyism’ and the lack of self-respect which it denoted were Bright and Cobden’s habitual explanation for the unaccountable failure of the middle class to perform the historic role for which they had cast it. It is the merit of G.R. Searle’s study to show that matters were more ...”

“... two to three) is still below the national average. He also has words of sympathy for that self-sacrificing group: dons’ wives. But he does not mention the extreme difficulty women have in obtaining university teaching posts, thereby inflicting a crushing financial burden on Newnham, a single-sex college – as indeed on all colleges which want to ...”

“... or exploitation, nor religious feeling to priestly mystification. Not the reason of science or self-interest, but only the call of love could cure the curse of Cain. An alternative human nature, in keeping with the Everlasting Gospel, lay waiting to be realised. ‘The intensity of this vision,’ Thompson writes, ‘made it impossible for Blake to fall ...”

“... were cut short prematurely. Grandfather Toynbee had been a successful London doctor until his self-inflicted experiments with chloroform went fatally wrong. An even more striking exemplar was the remarkable career at Balliol College, Oxford of Uncle Arnold, after whom not only his nephew but Toynbee Hall in the East End of London were posthumously ...”

“... repetition. The book that follows is a model of how such things should be done. It starts with a self-contained introduction, then gives the whole text of Steller’s Journal of a Voyage with Bering, followed by intelligent notes and an impressive bibliography. Many people on hearing the name of Steller will cry ‘Steller’s eider!’ or ‘Swift’s ...”

“... no committee.’ So Cabinet ministers had their first experience of having to negotiate with a self-confessed Marxist. We just kept telling them that we couldn’t have proper talks until they released Nelson Mandela and unbanned the ANC. Nelson knew we were working for him. When the Commonwealth Eminent Persons’ Group came out, he gave ex-President ...”