“... with the beautiful faces were also, mysteriously, the ones it was most fun to be with.’ The self-proclaimed ‘honesty’ of the wild, well-born stranger was doubted, but her fascination prevailed. She married an art dealer, Kenelm, understood to be seriously ill, and conducted daring affairs, one of them on the Métro with her friend Monique’s friend ...”

“... the modern world to the infection of politics by fanaticism, and to talk as though decent doses of self-interested pragmatism, whatever their other shortcomings, at least help to inoculate the polity against this kind of evil. Sri Lanka is a reminder that self-interested pragmatism is not always so benign. Thirty years ...”

“... European countries after World War Two. There was a spirit of national unity, uncorroded by either self-interest or group interest. In particular, the corruption which has since become a serious problem in China was largely absent. Poverty, prostitution and drugs were eliminated. At China’s low level of economic development, the Soviet-style central planning ...”

“... methods, on his memories of the Haitian labourers in Biran; sometimes revealing: he considers him self a self-taught revolutionary, but one who already had a Marxist formation at the time of Moncada. He gives an appreciative picture of Nuncio Zacchi, and tries to explain to Betto that the Church was not very important in ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Deir Yassin Remembered, 5 Galena Road, London W6 OLT.) The return of those exiles in the name of self-determination was Arafat’s proclaimed mission. Only when they were safe in their homes, protected by their own soldiers within their borders, would they avoid further massacres – a goal shared of course by the Zionists on behalf of Europe’s Jews. Many ...”

“... that arose as a result of European colonialism, or simply to dismiss them as the fantasies or self-interested fabrications of the colonial sources. Even in academic anthropology, supposedly a discipline that promotes an awareness and appreciation of cultural difference, the figure of the cannibal has become subject to much sceptical discussion. It is this ...”

“... a set of optimistic exhortations, and volumes on the two Parliamentary chambers have been either self-congratulatory or merely descriptive accounts of unsatisfactory procedures and bad habits. In that short time the landscape has been changed not only by a general election but by Nolan. Some years ago I sat in embarrassment at an international conference on ...”

“... rigid and abnormally fussy’. She displays throughout ‘a powerful ego’: ‘Deeper than self-doubt was certainty of the importance of her self.’ But Wharton’s egotism and sense of her own importance were entirely justified. Mainwaring finds it hard to lift her head from the engrossing details of her quest to ...”

“... shown to jump from one idea to another and then back again, his betrayals motivated sometimes by self-interest, sometimes by a childish impulse to bite the hand that fed him. It’s true that his easygoing inconsistency earned him the contempt of both the hardline Communist Siqueiros, and the humanist, independent Orozco. He was also an excellent ...”

“... depiction of ordinary rural life, in the coaxing of opaque inner lives, and most of all in his self-smothering ability to see life not as a writer might see it, but entirely from within the minds of his mostly uneducated characters. More than Chekhov indeed, who was always an intellectual, if an uncannily bashful one, Verga writes from within a community ...”

“... that made life impossible to plan. Tens of millions of people changed their jobs, homes, class and self-identity as an unprepared but determined state suddenly abolished the market and took control of every element of agriculture, industry and trade. All this would of itself have been traumatic enough, yet the regime decided at the same time to carry out the ...”

“... wasn’t right. It was Marilyn’s misfortune to think that serious acting could save her from self-doubt. In fact it only exacerbated it. The Girl, though certainly choking and limiting as a character, was something she knew about, and it remained for her a very special and individual invention. But Learning is bigger and better than any other biographer ...”

“... costumes, like my own drawings. There was something regressive about Kirby now – he’d become self-referential, the outsider artist decorating the walls of private rooms.The comics Karl and I actually relished in 1976 and 1977, if we were honest (and Karl was more honest than me), were The Defenders, Omega the Unknown and Howard the Duck, all written by a ...”