“... truthfulness, honesty, unselfishness, generosity, modesty, composure, thoughtfulness, and a self-denying lack of ambition for external recognition’ in Vincent’s list – reticence could only be a beneficent trait. It was also believed to neutralise secrecy’s demoralising tendencies. Gentlemen could be entrusted with secret knowledge without fear ...”

“... with an avalanche of publicity. It calls into question the accuracy of the autobiography of the self-same Rigoberta Menchú, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, and revisits the old debate about the political impact in Latin America of the guerrilla warfare theorists who sprang up in the wake of the Cuban Revolution and Che Guevara’s romantic ...”

“... and triumph that spite, recrimination and finger-pointing follow one campaign and specious self-congratulation another though both were executed with the same skill and determination. Only the outcome was different – and that, again, mostly as a result of chance. After a hundred years in which the most inept British general could win wars in Asia 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 ...”

“... the remotest event, the smallest recorded detail, may have meaning: its inclusion is therefore self-justifying; in any case, Parker, like all great scholars, loves what he knows. He knows the topography of Boston and New York, the evolving social history of a neighbourhood or particular street; he knows the route of the Democratic Party parade through ...”

“... But it seems more likely that they were put off by her combination of aggressive sexuality and self-centredness – effectively, a grab for attention on Freeman’s part that violated the unspoken rules of the narrative compact. (One contributor tried to convince herself that Freeman intended her chapter as a satire, though the evidence shows that it was ...”

“... has also been noted that he had long been a loyal part of the Japanese establishment, and that his self-proclaimed break with the past was more a matter of sartorial style than of political substance. He has always belonged to one of the LDP’s squabbling factions, whereas Tanaka has dismissed the factions’ role as ‘collecting money to buy votes’, and ...”

“... her way with great care and deliberation’ in London society. ‘The consequence is a (socially) self-conscious style of writing that often – especially in the late work – comes inflected with a disturbing mood or tone of bad faith. Again and again the poetry seems oblique, or held in reserve, or ...”

“... original editors ensured that the anthology was never just an accumulation of (verbally) self-contained texts which happened to be (materially) stitched together between two covers. The most obvious appeal of teaching anthologies is financial: word for word, the gold-embossed Norton costs less than the tattiest airport paperback. But the sheer ...”

“... Sartre (with whom he occasionally had whispered exchanges), and to what seemed to be a sublime self-confidence. We were to discuss: (1) the value of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel (this was Camp David time), (2) peace between Israel and the Arab world generally, and (3) the rather more fundamental question of future coexistence between Israel ...”

“... an accompanist) of his own’. It is a story about exploitation, possession and artistry, and very self-consciously of its time. It is a strange and artful book; and Du Maurier seems to me more archly attentive to what he is up to than Pick gives him credit for. When, for example, the narrator describes the talk of these young bohemian artists as not ...”

“... as Hegel and Royce, repeated his mistake when they defined reality as perfect knowledge or perfect self-consciousness. This, too, was an attempt to get rid of an abyss, this time by making our present epistemic situation continuous with the ideal epistemic situation – making our own network of mental states continuous with that of the Absolute. But this sort ...”

“... the magazines with a flushed listlessness. As the scene develops he becomes more paralysed and self-absorbed, an observer of the voyeurs, attending to the signs, but unable to go the whole way. ‘A large sign over the magazine rack says “Try Before You Buy is NOT Our Policy”. Mr Phillips feels too shy to actually pick up any of the magazines so he ...”

“... abate, and here and there a few bold voices spoke up on behalf of clothing, not only as legitimate self-fashioning, but also as that most prestigious of academic theoretical categories, a discourse. In their collection of essays, On Fashion (1994), Shari Benstock and Suzanne Ferris traced the change to French feminist theory, ‘whose stylish, wickedly ...”

“... that was the creation of the 1688 Revolution? Are those who have seen 18th-century Britain as a self-consciously ‘modern’ nation merely projecting their own values back in time? Did the educated classes, outside the Court and the Government, yearn for old allegiances? Did the masses resent the German opportunists foisted on them as their kings? Yet ...”