“... favourite potential target. Incinerating North Korea in a pre-emptive strike would be an act of self-defence, as Trump sees it: in his speech to the UN General Assembly, he said that the US ‘will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea’ if ‘Rocket Man’ develops a weapon that can reach Denver. (Like genocide, nuclear war is invariably ...”

“... It is here that H. sapiens’s narcissistic tendencies, our instinct to believe that we are self-evidently and in all respects a huge upgrade on our human relatives, can get in the way. However, a betting person, travelling back in time to around 100 ka to take a punt on which species of Homo might come out on top in the hominin games, might well have ...”

“... was at odds with the healthy desire of the Australians and Canadians – and the Irish – for self-government. It also imperilled Anglo-American co-operation. Balfour’s government collapsed in late 1905 and the Liberals returned to office, securing a large electoral majority in 1906. True to family tradition, Grey expressed repeated doubts about serving ...”

“... been rediscovered in 1900) that an adequate explanation could be given. Part of Julian Huxley’s self-appointed task was to frame a new evolutionary synthesis that married Darwinian and Mendelian ideas.Genetics also opened up new possibilities for the human species. It was standard practice in horticulture and livestock breeding to weed out weaker strains ...”

“... the apples on a tree.) But what she lacks in formal education, Dr Sweet Mother makes up for in self-confidence, street smarts and ambition. In her Independence Day speech, she denounces Tuvy’s ambitions to succeed the Old Horse, but she is quietly plotting to bypass the Seat of Power and install herself as leader. Bulawayo has chosen her animals ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... ask for editorial support. Not much change from the first political Benn, except that he has more self-confidence. At the same time another stream of thought becomes more insistent. Always part fascinated, part repelled by journalism (he continues to this day to claim that he remains a journalist, and he retains his NUJ card), he gave in 1968 two ...”

“... but given the social conditions I didn’t think I could.’ There is also much pride and lack of self-pity. ‘We haven’t suffered enough,’ one says. ‘We’ve been too close to the USSR. Now we have to learn the hard way.’ This, unfortunately, isn’t going to be a problem. To the north, the Soviet Union displays froideur and has enough troubles of ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”