“... command by virtue of status, and by exercising the virtues associated with that status: calm, self-confidence, courage, acceptance of responsibility and massive common sense. These were the qualities, not of the old feudal aristocracy which had destroyed itself by its competitive heroism, but of a service gentry, serving not their caste but the State, or ...”

“... All this might have a fascination for the author himself and for the more prurient reader but the self-portrait simply isn’t interesting enough to merit so much baring of the soul. Another trouble is that some of Logue’s anecdotes are Pooterish in their absurdity. There is an occasion when a writer in the Times Literary Supplement accuses T.S. Eliot of ...”

“... is in and out of psychiatric hospitals, estranged from his wife and at odds with the self-satisfactions of his community. ‘You are a man without boundaries,’ concludes the blithely uncompromising rabbi he visits: ‘There are limits, prescribed, written. You’ve overshot’ Conformity is complicated for these characters: unexpected detours ...”

“... it gradually gave way to the plainer, more disenchanted idiom of Patrick Kavanagh, or the self-parodic minimalism of Samuel Beckett, so fearful of writing Hiberno-English that he ceased to write in English altogether. Colm Tóibín’s austere, monkish prose, in which everything is exactly itself and redolent of nothing else, belongs to this ...”

“... bits of string. Lieutenant Robert, the young conscript who is for the moment the author’s other self, and who will make a cursory appearance later in the novel as an Italian Count, is formally invited to dinner by the Marchese on whom he is billeted; and he is more preoccupied with making his appearance fit for High Society than with the delirious export of ...”

“... Thereafter he analyses all the quiddities you might dream up: the painted title itself; or the self-cancelling title which depends on a willingness to be arch; or titled titles, like Joseph Kosuth’s, where the art work is a text of some description, often a dictionary definition; or the literary satires of Situationism, handled here with deadpan ...”

“... would destroy the parasite. That campaign was one of the last expressions of Euro-American self-confidence and of the narrow bio-medical thinking which defined ‘malaria’ as a single disease which technology could eradicate from above. As early as 1969 the WHO realised that its campaign was not working. DDT and other insecticides turned out to be ...”

“... and rebellion among Appalachian ‘mountaineers’, John Gaventa noted that where ‘a positive self-image is not portrayed for a particular group, that group may develop a sense of inadequacy about itself, reinforced by how other groups project their media stereotypes on them’ – and he isn’t talking about anything more sinister than the Beverly ...”

“... An audience which will laugh at anything can teach you nothing about humour, which requires self-criticism. But when the peers stuck to questions and answers on serious points they were impressive, especially the women. Baroness Young almost got you convinced that the BBC’s Overseas Broadcasting services, far from declining under this government, had ...”

“... of the uniformed audience. This stereotype, based though it is on envy, resentment, snobbery and self-regard, contains some truth. Aronson argues that in America language is being continuously and routinely debased, so that the inhabitants find themselves increasingly in ‘a universe where everything is “FABULOUS!” so “nothing is anything.” ’ But ...”

“... will increase. It is important for politicians’ – and particularly candidates’ – self-respect to know that polls can sometimes be wrong: how we in the SDP hug ourselves with glee at the memory of the NOP poll two days before our famous victory in Portsmouth South. But for as long as we continue to try to squeeze three parties into a two-party ...”

“... Much like Austen Chamberlain’s after-dinner fulminations, Crawford’s diary entries are windy, self-regarding and tortuously rambling. They boast a certain charm in the early sections, when the diarist is an Oxford Gladstonian, but grow increasingly tedious towards the end, when editorial control should have been applied more stringently. Of Crawford’s ...”

“... nature in general and, above all, in weather as a sublime force. He was now capable both of a more self-consciously personal and experimental art than previously, but also of adjusting his art to appeal to a public which he perceived as alien. Eventually he found some powerful emblems both for domestic tragedy and High Tory despair. Rosenthal explains all this ...”

“... more relaxed under a Labour than under a Conservative government lies in the British instinct for self-preservation. The rich are more capable of exercising this instinct than the poor. Better-equipped, better-educated, better able to act on advice from tax consultants, they take a peculiar pleasure in outwitting a Labour government temporarily in ...”

“... that the Aussies bring it on themselves, with their Barry McKenzies, their Ian Chappells, their self-parodying Foster ads, and so on. And there is the accent: for some reason more readily mimickable than any of our own regional twangs. Theories about the Australian accent are just as snooty as theories about Australia. Some say that it is a form of ...”