“... 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 ...”

“... a working-class teenager. She is not today’s Angus Wilson nor means to be, but within their self-imposed limits these are immensely enjoyable and successful stories. ‘Enjoyable’ is the word too for Gilbert Adair’s jokey fiction around and about the case of Léopold Sfax, who might be called a philosophical cousin not very removed of Paul de ...”

“... innocent, and if people are exasperated by her failure to notice that she is unloved, it is this self-deception which protects her from the cruelty she meets with at the end. Tolstaya cleverly does not show her reaction to this final blow. Irony is the main flavour of the story not sentiment. When Zhenechka’s charges were young she wrote out a motto for ...”

“... top-secret private diaries. Some of the passages he quotes from Brunel are memorable. ‘My self-conceit and love of glory or rather approbation,’ Brunel confided to his diary in October 1827, ‘vie with each other which shall govern me. The latter is so strong that, even on a dark night, riding home, when I pass some unknown person who perhaps does ...”

“... of Airport Noise and Sleep Disturbance published in 1992 by the Department of Transport (and the self-serving and misleading use made of it by the Department), I had suffered no sleep disturbance from aircraft noise: I had merely been woken up and then kept awake by it. At 6 a.m. I resumed my record of the arrival of aircraft. While reading of the concern ...”

“... pensions and personal equity plans. He packages his wares in ways that flatter the customer’s self-image, making us feel gayer dogs than we are. And from his ‘Earls Court hippy’ days, Branson seems to have retained the knack of working communally, drawing on the creative talent of his subordinates. He is, it seems, a good man to work for and – more ...”

“... is proof enough of that). For all these reasons – honour, morality, value for money, self-interest – there is a cast-iron case for preserving and wisely using the aid and development budget. Unfortunately, not everyone sees it this way. Old habits are beginning to reassert themselves. Other parts of government are beginning to cast envious ...”

“... her a chance to ‘create another life and a new time’. Virginia is no longer her childhood self, but neither has she escaped its ‘cold air’.Lispector finished The Chandelier in Naples in 1944, and wrote The Besieged City in Bern, where her husband was posted to the Brazilian Embassy. She was lonely, but found solace in the city’s medieval ...”

“... that if I smile I might get out of this alive!”’ Tambu is a complex figure with a talent for self-destructive behaviour, a woman who betrays friends, alienates family and – out of envy or misjudgment – sabotages her own best interests.Later in the novel, Tambu has a disagreement with her cousin Nyasha, to whom she was close as a teenager and whose ...”

“... In October, two scholars published a rebuttal, subtitled ‘God’s Shadow and Academia’s Self-Appointed Sultans’. A few days later, the original trio published a response to the rebuttal. By this time, the controversy had spawned its own hashtag (#Selimgate), numerous blog posts and an online poll asking how Mikhail ought to respond (a plurality ...”

“... to anyone. In this branch, I try to ignore the noise from the other side of the wall: my happier self in his brand-new office ...”

“... doesn’t convey enough moral force. If altruism isn’t enough motivation, enlightened self-interest will do. More transmission of this virus anywhere in the world increases the chance of a more deadly, more transmissible, more likely-to-evade-vaccination variant emerging. Do we really want to sit like Professor Challenger in his sealed ...”

“... committed to open debate. The GB News episode shows the flimsiness of this bit of conservative self-fashioning. Andrew Neil, the chairman of GB News, warned the companies that had paused their advertising: ‘This boycott business can play both ways … we can muster millions of supporters … Not a good idea to be on the wrong end of them.’ Boycotting ...”

“... Alison serene in a kimono, her hair in a ‘thick, dark, waist-length braid’.Patrick is prone to self-deception. On arrival in Los Angeles, he’s reminded that he hasn’t been hired to work on the script but as a production assistant. His pay is $15 an hour. (‘Isn’t that a job for a kid?’ his wife asks.) The film isn’t what he envisioned ...”

“... as punishment for ‘being herself – not the dutiful wife or somebody’s mother, but her real self, stubbornly content’. Deep down he fears losing her to the invisible force he imagines is taking over the women in the community. This is also why he ties up his daughter, Julie, before locking her in a cupboard: ‘All this was only to protect them ...”