“... legislation and what will become of us all.’Wodehouse was here being, among other things, self-satirising. He was, all through his life, absolutely obsessed with money and with the necessity of preserving it from the clutches of the Revenue. This theme permeates his letters and took up much of his time with agents, lawyers and accountants; long ...”

“... of tea and immersing myself in hot water? I assess my resources, and in the spirit of pioneering self-sufficiency (pre-desert island practice) put three large saucepans of water to boil on the gas stove. I shall have my bath and cup of tea – and go to the ball, too, if I want! But ten minutes later the electricity clicks and hums all the machines back into ...”

“... an economy in need of structural reform, Egypt is saddled with leaders committed to nothing but self-preservation. Hussein Ahmed Amin, who was Egypt’s Ambassador in Algiers until 1990 feels that there are clear parallels with the Algerian experience. ‘The present Mubarak regime is tottering,’ he says. ‘They talk of crushing the militants, but as ...”

“... in calculations like those of Professor Fair. Bush looks and sounds ghastly; veering from fury to self-pity in great arm-waving swoops and (as Clive James once wrote of Michael Foot) repeatedly proving that the English language can do anything with him. It’s not that his syntax wasn’t execrable before, it’s that people around him have started – well ...”

“... the innate romanticism beating up beneath. ‘My whole life,’ he writes, in a rare moment of self-revelation, ‘has been a search for the miraculous: yet at the first faint flavour of the uncanny, I tend to turn rational and scientific.’ Of course. And the counterpart of this exacting intellect was the camera-coolness of his eye. His descriptions are ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... a cloak of irony and never quite losing his admiration for their fortitude with all its defects of self-righteousness and mean-spiritedness. The newcomer to Keillor ought, I am afraid, to start off by reading either Leaving Home or Lake Wobegon Days. The new book is a collection of oddments, many of which do not work nearly as well as they do on stage ...”

“... mosque, and they only half-believed it. If you are in Britain, Islam appears an inward-looking and self-protective faith, but when you are in the East it appears vital, active and proselytising. Not long ago, the same could be said of Christianity. Unless we are prepared to think about our own history, enter into it a little, we cannot know what the Muslim ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... value’. It follows that any theory to the contrary should be re-examined because it is producing self-evidently ridiculous results. This is to say, not, of course, that works of art can be considered – or were ever considered except briefly in the 1890s – as wholly autonomous, with an existence separate from the social and moral values by which we ...”

“... the most devastating attack on Haig’s reputation since the publication of Lloyd George’s self-serving memoirs in the Thirties. Much of it, admittedly, is old hat. Haig’s failure to pass his exams, his use of intrigue to gain promotion, his conveniently influential marriage all are dragged out again. To these Mr Winter adds the suggestion that, in ...”

“... his cool thoughts of beating her senseless with his shoe heel.’ And they strangle as part of a self-development project: If he were interviewed he would say, ‘It was terrific! There’s nothing in the world like it.’ (‘Would you do it again, Mr Bruno?’) ‘Well, I might,’ reflectively, with caution, as an arctic explorer when asked if he will ...”

“... on that shame-making interlude, where the Mountbattens appear to have sustained their usual self-loving impression of doing their level best against frightful odds. One teensy moment, though, is worth savouring. In 1945 Edwina paid a flying visit to Saigon, where the British General Gracey was in the process of restoring the pre-war status quo. The ...”