“... like this keeps you alert. Les Murray is a rarity, a poet with a gift of the gab used not for self-regarding rhetoric but for storytelling, a man writing with unstrained and often moving eloquence about the places and people of his native New South Wales. He offers a possible answer to the teasing question: ‘Does Australian poetry exist?’ Exist, that ...”

“... hospital, was a great critical success. She was good at the business end of poetry too, an adept self-promoter, networker and marketer. Adrienne Rich remembered Sexton’s poise and elegant good looks at a Boston party. As Middlebrook notes, ‘success in the poetry business resembled success in the wool business.’ Salesmanship and marketing certainly ...”

“... great; the best one can say for you on that score, is that you’re unbalanced!’ Unyielding self-control gave Noel an integrity of character that attracted to her a long series of wobbly and histrionic young men, of whom Rupert was only the most extreme case. They all had to cope, as best they could, with her steady refusal to reciprocate the desires ...”

“... of mistakes,’ Lawson told the House of Commons in his resignation speech in 1989. Alas, the self-abasing passages, replete with abject contrition, which readers will naturally expect, have so far eluded me. But it can be reported immediately that Lawson’s fear, back in 1987, that ‘I might have made the wrong choice of Chief Secretary after ...”

“... is ill-founded, if not completely mad. That said, he writes of our monkey forebears with such wit, self-irony and winning narrative that his whole story (however loony) makes a much better read than the sober, earnest David Attenborough-style version. Take ‘brachiation’, for example – the ability that some monkeys acquired about 15 million years ago to ...”

“... The MNF’s presence was highly controversial and subject to conflicting interpretations. Its self-proclaimed goal was vague and, with hindsight, absurdly optimistic: to protect the innocent from slaughter and oversee a return to some kind of normality. Others, perhaps casting their minds back to 1958 when US Marines landed at Beirut to fight off ...”

“... of one’s own youth’s brilliance, and the more general sadness of the unknowable generations of self-stifled and closeted poets that preceded our outspoken time, and then, too, the simple asexual unattainability of much of what we really want and the unretrievability of what we best remember, are some of the emotions toward which Hollinghurst shepherds ...”

“... themselves put pen to paper – until the publication in ten years’ time of a spate of works of self-justification: Not One of Us by Lady Grantham, Going Down with the Ship by Sir Ian Gilmour, The Non-Playing Captain of the Wets by Lord Whitelaw and The Broken Reed by Messrs Sherman and Strauss. We shall have to wait until Willie tells the story of his ...”

“... That it has fallen into such disuse is a measure of the extent to which the art world has become self-enclosed. Aesthetes tend not to own country shoes at the best of times: they are an urban breed, disdainful of even a smattering acquaintance with the labelled minutiae of that other environment. Nevertheless there are encouraging signs that the situation is ...”

“... an unfamiliar item of conversation – martyrdom to class struggle. Mackay excels at a comedy of self-abasement, intermittently deprecating and cruel. But unhappily she has a propensity for overkill. Bad jokes sneak in and the insubstantial narrative indicates weakness. Pearl’s lodger attempts to seduce her but in vain, despite a liberal sprinkling of ...”

“... which fill their heads, whatever they may be, will seem as implausibly grandiose and as deviously self-serving as those of Rhodes do today. We can also be pretty sure that whatever may have kept the delegates busy that Saturday afternoon, it had not been a visit to the Rhodes ...”

“... with a suggestion of manic-depression, ruthlessness, truculence, offensiveness and ‘a genius for self-advertisement’. He even has a go at Godwin’s erratic spelling. On the credit side he admits that Godwin had an instinct wholly his own for literary quality and, grudgingly, was ‘a brilliant editor; though such things are difficult to measure, it is at ...”

“... of his own political inclinations, his Toryism; Waverley is his wryly-observed romantic boyhood self; Bradwardine, Oldbuck or even Sir Arthur Wardour are himself playing at ancestor worship and finicky antiquarianism. Ruefully but firmly, the follies of such characters are seen in the plain light of contemporary common day. They pay a price when they give ...”

“... Part of Grimond’s appeal as a politician has always been his complete freedom from pomposity and self-importance. This is well illustrated by an anecdote about Attlee: Whenever I hear the words ‘status’ or ‘prestige’ I reach for my gun. I once attended a banquet at which Mr Attlee, after he had ceased to be Prime Minister, was present in full ...”

“... word for ‘home’ (it is one of the words concentrated into the acronym Gestapo). She discusses self-deception, confession, professional confidentiality, police and journalistic investigations. She has some notable horror stories. There was the Holy Vehm, a secret vigilante organisation which was founded in mid-13th-century Westphalia and lasted until ...”