“... in my heart, even if it meant my resorting from time to time to the alleged joys of so-called self-abuse. And on Godsmiths: And I would never do my bees the wrong I had done my God, to whom I had been taught to ascribe my angers, fears, desires, and even my body. True, in reverting to 1955 I am remembering me, but that doesn’t mean I am not ...”

“... misreadings – for instance, his dismissive remarks about Karl Kraus (as epitome of ‘Jewish self-hatred’). For many readers Reich-Ranicki was far too opinionated. It was difficult, as Böll observed, to discern the criteria which led him to praise one book and damn another. These same merits and limitations are evident in Thomas Mann and his ...”

“... can relate to their oppressors as equals. Mandela’s demeanour and discourse display a pride and self-confidence that equal those of his oppressors. He even learned their despised language – but not to gain entry as a colonised subject. Black consciousness, as a sense of identity that has rid itself of the inferiority complex of an internalised slave ...”

“... conspicuous lack of vices is disarmingly old-fashioned, and this, too, Daisy – worldly, wordy, self-interestedly ‘complicated’ – takes almost as a rebuke. Talk about nannies with other affluent neighbourhood wives (for all still employ this depleted species) reveals fears: ‘stealing my husband’, ‘going for people with knives’, ‘killing one ...”

“... they are moved out of themselves – ‘beside themselves’ might be a better phrase since the self is often split by extreme stress and exhaustion (Doug Scott speaking to his feet in his bivouac with Dougal Haston near the summit of Everest, Joe Simpson’s ‘voice’ that kept him right on his agonising descent). It is a mark of John Harrison’s ...”

“... has the air of being a poor relation, coming in on the coat-tails of Post-Modernism proper. If any self-respecting intellectual is Post-Modernist, then, the implication is, a contemporary novel had better be so too – out of duty, almost, as much as out of imperious artistic necessity. Cross Channel, whether ‘Post-Modernist’ or not, strikes me as perhaps ...”

“... focus is on Lenin the politician, the description of his personal characteristics – his total self-confidence, his phenomenal energy and powers of concentration, his ‘magpie-like’ capacity to absorb information – provides a much more plausible account of his extraordinary achievements than Volkogonov’s portrayal of a man out of his depth in ...”

“... concept of owning land or owning anything. Many are not so much the dispossessed of society, as self-dispossessed. Fréa gave up a job in publishing to protest at Fairmile. Dale gave up nursing and Richard gave up managing a mental health phone-line. Many sign on, but many others choose not to. Going against the grain of consumerism, these renunciants have ...”

“... working overtime to produce an interpretation that would negate the obvious: that in the self-consciously multicultural Republic, black-white tensions have decisive consequences for the meting out of justice. Blacks have always known what whites now wish to forget in their desire to enjoin us all to transcend race in the interests of colourblind ...”

“... as specially likeable or charismatic, Cook settles for an image of preoccupied aloofness. For him, self-mastery has higher ends: only a calm head can cope with the grave, complex issues he has been entrusted with. ‘Don’t break my concentration,’ seems to be his plea. ‘Our country needs it’. And usually this works. It does help, of course, that Cook ...”

“... a bash for executives of the music business: ‘I refuse to be used merely as photo fodder for the self-publicity of somebody whose party has no understanding of or compassion for the people of this country.’ In an election campaign timidly built on the values of Middle England and the Daily Mail, covert encouragement has been whispered to the ...”

“... however, Edith was the indispensable Sitwell. It is too soon to know how much of Walton’s self-critical, precisely-crafted music will outlast this century: the Viola, Violin and Cello Concertos, the two symphonies, Belshazzar, the Violin Sonata, the String Quartet perhaps. But Façade is secure, written at the age of 22, just as Mendelssohn once or ...”

“... things which makes it remarkable is the combination of a highly-wrought narrative surface with a self-consciously contrived structure. There’s an epigraph from George Herbert, and it is clear that McWilliam is attempting to bring together intellectual precision, technical ingenuity and unsettling resonance in the manner of some metaphysical poetry. A Case ...”

“... half of his dictatorship. For two decades he had insisted on austerity, autarky and the spirit of self-sacrifice. Then in 1958 he abandoned the ideology of the Falange and told people to forget politics and concentrate on making money. One of his ministers called this era ‘the twilight of ideologies’, and argued that ‘the health of free states can be ...”

“... dolls, staring distractedly over each other’s tiny shoulders’. The Pahlavis’ greatest act of self-aggrandisement – the massive binge for world leaders at the great ruins of Persepolis – counted for nothing when the end came. Indeed, the very detritus of the banquet was effortlessly turned by the new regime into a symbol of emptiness. When the Shah ...”