“... work under the new industrialism, and is balanced by the critical yet sympathetic discussion of ‘Self-Help and Respectability’ which follows. He respects the experience of working men who became Methodists: ‘the message that comes through innumerable accounts of the great central Methodist experience of conversion is one of joy and hope.’ To some ...”

“... ostentatiously aspired – or in the control of the rising professional class with which Huxley self-consciously identified. Indeed, one of Desmond’s more tendentious moves is to suggest that Huxley was eventually won round to a sense of evolutionary progression precisely because it mirrored his own sense of social aspiration – as one of the community ...”

“... were the same attitude retained, make it lose its balance. The figure, therefore, though still self-poised, trembles on the very verge of motion – a circumstance which doubtless enhances the indescribable charm of this statue which enchants the world.’ No doubt the rich vein of comedy which the authors have inadvertently tapped when they embarked on ...”

“... Berlin’s distinction between ‘positive’ liberty, which has to do with civic virtue and with self-fulfilment through citizenship, and ‘negative’ liberty, which has to do with the individual’s right to be left alone. Houston sees no gap or tension between the two concepts in Sidney’s writings. To Sidney, ‘individual freedom and the effective ...”

“... Mr Engelhardt is one of those simple souls who tends to blame American-Jewish paradox on self-hatred or, like Arthur Schlesinger who – having in his time administered some wet smackeroos to the buttocks of the powerful – might be expected to know, on the ‘refugee’s desire for approval’. This is too simple. In 1989, Kissinger told a private ...”

“... school. As anyone who went to a school of that kind knows, what it cannot produce is publicschool self-assurance. Harold’s priggishness was such that he once suggested to the headmaster that soccer matches be held at lunchtime to prevent his peers getting up to sexual mischief. Wilson came into politics as a young man among giants: he was the youngest ...”

“... variation will remain the species’ wealth – yet under very different rules, and with a more self-conscious guidance. This is surely the true point (and the real difficulty) of ‘globalisation’: the problem of history, beyond the end of prehistory. Kohn repeatedly observes that biological science has always been affected by and occasionally derived ...”

“... Brittain lost much of her earlier spiky assertiveness and was content to play the more traditional self-sacrificing role of the hero’s beloved. Leighton’s discontent had been difficult to deal with in part because the betrayal and disillusion of war, like the earlier heroism, was still something shared by men, by initiates. Latterly, as Brittain described ...”

“... do or might do to themselves. The allegory asks to be translated into various ironies about the self-destructive political, social and economic behaviour of the Irish, but the core of the imagery goes back to the old imputation of Irish cannibalism. Fynes Moryson, of whom Swift was at the very least recently made aware or reminded, had painfully opened up a ...”

“... the continent. Innumerable people couldn’t help feeling, and repeating with varying degrees of self-satisfaction, ‘just look at the difference!’ They may be breaking up and disintegrating, but we appear to be doing the opposite – to be integrating, getting over at least some features of nationalism, pooling sovereignty, looking rationally ...”

“... the Leghisti of Umberto Bossi as the original sin of the Italian state – helped to undermine the self-sufficiency and initiative of some parts of the country, especially the South, where functioning arms of the old Bourbon government were allowed to atrophy. What the Leghisti ignore, and Mack Smith reminds us, is that the North profited from this new ...”

“... in peacetime. A substantial package guaranteed the same percentage of wage income for most of the self-employed. There is probably more to come. In each announcement, Sunak has repeated the same mantra: ‘whatever it takes’.His calm and authoritative presentation has won him praise from those alarmed by Johnson’s shambling improvisation. Unlike the ...”

“... with big ideas for changing the world. The successful candidates were a bunch of mini-Thiels: self-styled libertarians, contemptuous of college and its pointless rituals. ‘They were – nearly all of them – boys,’ as Chafkin points out, ‘and, almost to a person, they shared Thiel’s social awkwardness.’ One 17-year-old was hoping to extend the ...”

“... writes, in Nietzsche’s sense of having nothing to constrain the full expression of his true self. Surprisingly, his first instinct was a policy of benign paternalism. He organised rubbish collections, helped launch the seasonal tuna hunt, welcomed Arab notables to state receptions, and embarked on an ambitious scheme to turn Benghazi into an elegant ...”

“... the full use she made of all those powerful elements. Her exercise of her gift required a heroic, self-imposed practice unheard of in any other kind of dancing, and never undertaken by Duncan or St Denis, who schooled themselves only for greater degrees of lyricism and atmosphere. Even in the most taxing ballet training, composition is a separate matter not ...”