“... again and again, plays out Bergson’s first rule of comedy: that life should be reshaped into a self-repeating mechanism (it’s no coincidence that so much slapstick involves cars: in Bergson’s terms, automobiles are automatically funny). What this aesthetic shares with its uncomic nouveau roman forebears is an anti-naturalist, anti-humanist ...”

“... influenced by the statistics on prison deaths: in the years between 1990 and 2003 there were 947 self-inflicted deaths in prison, 177 of them of detainees aged 21 or under. At the time the case was heard more than a third of the deaths – there were very nearly two a week – were of people who had not even been convicted of an offence. One in five of those ...”

“... in such ‘depressed areas’ as Wigan and Barnsley, and an indictment of the callousness and self-deception that enabled the comfortable classes to ignore such appalling conditions. Out of fashion today, Priestley may not seem to belong in this company, and I have to admit that I came to English Journey expecting sentimental uplift mixed with anecdotal ...”

“... oldest daughter, was said to be ‘the loveliest girl in Vienna’, with lustrous dark hair and a self-confident gaze. She had her first kiss aged 17 with Gustav Klimt, while travelling in Genoa. Klimt found her beautiful but also something more: ‘She has everything a discerning man could possibly ask for from a woman, in ample measure; I believe wherever ...”

“... Tamerlan ‘perfect’ and ‘destined for greatness’, no doubt instilled a great deal of self-belief in him. But, as Gessen writes, ‘he had lived in seven cities and attended an even greater number of schools,’ entering tenth grade in Cambridge at 17. He struggled for good grades and to learn English, but as the oldest child was also the most ...”

“... the rich-bastard-favouring cut in the 50 per cent income tax rate; all these combined to make as self-evident and immediate a cock-up as anyone could remember. Six months later, it looked even worse. That’s because the economic outlook has continued to darken. One of the first things Osborne did as chancellor was to set up a new body, the Office of Budget ...”

“... and exterior had become indistinguishable. Tumbledown shacks contained ailing Land Rovers, self-cannibalising motorcycles and birds of prey in various stages of recuperation: an owl, a saker falcon, a chug and several common buzzards. A protective wall was constructed from corrugated iron and plasterboard. The corrugated iron rhymes very elegantly with ...”

“... for the first time under pressure.’ Since the war, the US had privileged the economic self-interest of its recovering allies, accepting their protectionism and an overvalued dollar as the price to be paid for its political hegemony. But the Vietnam War had depleted the Treasury, escalated inflation and upset the balance of payments, which only ...”

“... As an observer of the man, the psychic material Richardson has to account for includes an entirely self-willed craving for the bland, comme il faut anaesthesia of that marriage. The Picasso he describes spends much of his time revering the bourgeoisie in all its discreet charm and with all its suave complacency, and the days when he provides them with ...”

“... ashamed – that she turned in a rather famous essay on Montaigne (‘Montaigne: The Crisis of the Self’), that the professor (I’ll call him Charlus) confronted her in private, that he then told her parents, and that – unlike me – she’s never done any such thing again. Or to quote her recent email: [Charlus] first called me in to discuss. Something ...”

“... The worry that the act would produce a deluge of litigation led by the wealthy, the litigious, the self-seeking and the self-righteous was one that, a decade ago, I shared. The reality has been encouragingly different. But the segment of the media that had already fixed on scepticism about human rights as its agenda has ...”

“... a French spy. And so Johnston’s exciting subtitle has had to go and he has added a new, somewhat self-righteous preface to his revised version of the book. Here he excuses his description of Wordsworth as a ‘spy’ as the ‘harmless’ consequence of an honourable mission: ‘my large task of trying to shift the ponderous weight of Wordsworth’s ...”

“... into which Moorcock has inserted himself: Bastrop, Texas. A good place not to go out from. A self-curated mausoleum of memories: photographs, toys, magazines, William Morris wallpaper, Arts and Crafts furniture; a library of Victorian and Edwardian fiction, Stevenson, Meredith, Wells, Conrad, W. Pett Ridge. Moorcock, with his sacred cats in a ...”

“... and isn’t helped by his charmless, bloodless prose style, laced as it is with briskly self-satisfied flourishes which his opponents saw as insufferable arrogance. An ardent propagandist for so-called Basic English, a project which reduced the language to a mere 850 words, Richards was also a precursor of today’s global industry of ...”

“... it, and plenty of evidence to the contrary. With tragic and (in literary history) unparalleled self-delusion, he thought Sordello would be a popular success, and he was devastated by the farmyard chorus that greeted its appearance. Just as the critics accused him of wilful disregard for his readers, so he accused them of wilful laziness and ill-will. ‘My ...”