“... to be reconfigured,’ he later explained, ‘in such a way as to give incentives to motivate the self-interest.’Letwin and Redwood’s ideas also had traction in Tony Blair’s 1997 National Health Service Act. Together, the 1990 and 1997 Acts turned NHS hospitals into trusts able to operate as commercial businesses. Many formed Private Finance Initiative ...”

“... love, Nance.’) Forster had not liked it, seemingly on personal rather than literary grounds. Its self-portrait was too bleak and one-sided: Ackerley was greatly loved by his friends and this was hardly evident. Forster had written to this effect to Duncan Grant, saying that he agreed with Grant and wished he could give Joe ‘a good smack!’ But Grant ...”

“... quitted with disgust, the cheering fields regained,’ he wrote years later. His self-imposed exile ended only when Sir John Johnstone – who em­ployed him as a land steward on his ­est­ate in Hackness – brought Smith’s maps to the attention of the Royal Geographical Society.A second map exists at Bur­lington House, behind another ...”

“... the basement; Levy herself is putting together the crosswords in ‘a constant state of embittered self-righteousness’. Yet the anticipated moment of maturity never arrives; success does instead. By the age of 34, Levy has talked David Remnick into hiring her as a staff writer at the New Yorker, and after that there is, as her dad rather ominously puts ...”

“... reading, he never really refined or developed his early position. His final book about art was the self-explanatory and hand-waving Enjoying Pictures (1934), and he made no efforts to revise or correct Art for later editions.His main activity after 1914, as Hussey assiduously details, was not literary but social, greased by his wealth and new fame. Bell made ...”

“... she feels and fears’. Why is she so often angry? Because ‘only then does she regain the self-esteem she was not granted in the cradle.’ Why is she so impatient? Because as a baby she couldn’t be confident that the good breast would soon return. What can’t be explained by the breast can be explained by the pot. Why does she make such a virtue ...”

“... distance, laughing and occasionally chatting amicably with the mob, which was made up not only of self-professed former IDF soldiers but also several white nationalists, including members of the far-right Proud Boys, whose former leader was sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in the 6 January attacks on the US Capitol. Since white nationalists ...”

“... to find such a large majority in this group in favour of Trump.In modern America, neither economic self-description as articulated in polling nor political identity are independent variables. It is likely that in the coming weeks, large numbers of voters who in early November declared themselves in such surveys as the monthly Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index ...”

“... Annalena Baerbock, implore voters not to vote for Die Linke. But the most satisfying political self-detonation was that of Christian Lindner’s FDP, the party of slick entrepreneurs trapped in the amber of mid-century Ordoliberalism. Lindner, an amateur racing-car driver, came up with an elaborate plan titled ‘D-Day’ (discovered by Die Zeit’s Robert ...”

“... Dallas told me he would sometimes return to previous marginalia and argue with his former self. There are books from his childhood – the Harmsworth Encyclopedia, for example – in which the mythological and the real mingle so closely it is difficult to tell them apart. Sometimes visitors recognise a book they lent to him. They can thumb through ...”

“... of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.’ By and large, though, the tone was robustly self-satisfied, with plaudits for Israel and Britain in equal measure. Lord Turnberg (Labour): ‘Israel owes an enormous debt to Britain … we should celebrate the fact that we in Britain provided the foundations of a democratic state in a part of the world ...”

“... than his defences. I knew what he meant. I told him I was trying to give Julian a crash course in self-deprecation, and would continue to insist that he not make himself the hero of every anecdote. I told Jamie the work WikiLeaks was trying to do might be bigger than Julian’s ability to articulate it. There was this incredible need for spy-talk. Julian ...”

“... pace and prose. Like those establishment figures, epitomised by Henry Kissinger, who are the self-conscious heirs of the Anglo-European conservative tradition in foreign policy, with its emphasis on balance and order, liberal commentators were moved by a sensation of danger impending from a massive convulsion within the Kremlin’s sphere of influence or ...”

“... most of the old works Phelps includes are given friendly treatment, it is not the alienness and self-sufficiency of the past that receive emphasis but its nascent modernity: ‘What is particularly impressive is the way in which Petronius ... practised one of the most sophisticated techniques of the modern novel,’ and ‘Richardson had an intuitive ...”

“... for him, largely because it has abandoned its appeal to popular recognition in favour of a kind of self-sealing historicism. But he cannot quite keep his categories watertight. His love of Larkin’s poetry might seem, along with his admiration of Betjeman’s, to fit in with his notion of duty to the common reader, and his successful career as both television ...”