“... but we also know about Dmitry’s doubts (‘Will I, won’t I?’) and we’ve seen his angst and self-censure. The officers who are soon questioning him, building up their case, have surely got the wrong man. In any case, when does the likeliest suspect ever turn out to be the person who did it?Dmitry’s trial, a face-off between the ambitious young ...”

“... attitude to a novel-themed museum was one of mistrust. I place a high importance on the material self-reliance of a printed page. Kafka refused to put a picture of an insect on the cover of Metamorphosis. That’s what it is to believe in literature.And yet, a year and a half later, I was wandering the twisted streets of Cihangir and Çukurcuma, looking for ...”

“... care or the economic prospects of younger generations – was too often overlooked, because its self-appointed spokespersons tended to be metropolitan columnists such as Johnson.) But the question of the nation – of what, literally, we and our descendants are born into – is never exhausted by the conceits and prejudices of nationalism. That question ...”

“... was known popularly as Notre-Dame de Thermidor. The many names and their frequent changes, some self-determined but mostly reflecting the arrival and departure of men, give their own account of the mutability of these lives and their times.Récamier and Tallien were near contemporaries, born in the 1770s, as was Joséphine, at least for official ...”

“... are not among them. On the contrary, success in politics is a matter of rule-breaking and rampant self-interest, and power is exploited solely for personal enrichment. (A variant of this mentality manifests in online claims that Volodymyr Zelensky is a liar who wants more of British taxpayers’ money so he can build up his fleet of luxury cars.)Hilhorst was ...”

“... but there were ‘fewer still where it ruled unchallenged’.Employers fantasised about a ‘self-acting’ mechanism, particularly when faced with the rise of trade unionism, but only specific parts of labour processes were amenable to mechanisation. A machine invented in 1824 was supposed to produce a complete pin, but four decades later the heads were ...”

“... between 1983 and 1985 put an end to such plans. Festac had tried to inculcate a belief in African self-reliance, but the Ethiopian famine ushered in an era of celebrity-driven humanitarianism on the continent and the association of Africa with ‘crisis’.After Nance returned to New York, she suggested the idea of a photobook about Festac to several ...”

“... a desperate attempt to appeal to them. The film director Tyler Perry gave a speech about being a self-made billionaire; Michelle Obama gave a speech about the person bleeding out in the delivery room being your wife. Kamala Harris promised to ‘protect crypto’. It didn’t work.Donald Trump was better at pandering to the mythology of the patriarchy. Men ...”

“... had been sufficiently ‘grabbed and bothered’ by his first sight of Parmigianino’s enigmatic Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror to feel that he ought to ‘do something’ about it. Sensing a kindred spirit, Davis squares up at once to her original brief. ‘Here is a very concise and truthful answer: the reason I write a particular story may be because ...”

“... to serve as a model for the nations of the world. That lies in its genetic programme.’ Self-satisfaction is scarcely unfamiliar in Europe. But the contemporary mood is something different: an apparently illimitable narcissism, in which the reflection in the water transfigures the future of the planet into the image of the beholder. What explains ...”

“... power. That the succession was a major issue underlying the events of January and February 2011 is self-evident. But the sensational entry onto the political stage of young liberal and leftist activists and, above all, of hundreds of thousands if not several millions of ordinary Egyptians who found the courage to stand up and shout aloud their pent-up anger at ...”

“... columnists and television reporters, CNN above all – are participating in a unique form self-delusion. For the ‘peace process’ is being depicted as something mystical, almost holy, a shaft of light in a darkening world that will unite Muslim, Jew and Christian, a transfiguration in which the Arabs suddenly decided through some form of divine ...”

“... any of these wonderful scholars think what this meant to me, having a son who didn’t have enough self-respect to feel himself a man? You had such a craze for animals, but may I remind you, when you were staying with Ottla at Zürau you wouldn’t even undress in front of the cat she’d brought in to get rid of the mice ... Yet you imagined a dragon coming ...”

“... been opened. Once opened, it is not an easy book to close. Understandably a large number of the self-portraits were taken from the Uffizi collection, but in all other respects the work is a testament to Goldscheider’s archival passion, which represented the fulfilment of Burckhardt’s original intention, conceived in the previous century, to enlist ...”

“... made it clear that he wanted to lead a country in which no one felt excluded, not even the self-exclusionists of Orania. At this symbolic level nation-building has known its greatest success. The transformation of institutions has made a more qualified start: it has gone well in the Army, has resulted in the loss of almost all the SAAF’s pilots, and ...”