“... the worst sinners in the world. Surely they’d simply fallen over backwards into another kind of self-conceit.’ The fact remains, however, that he had an unusually profound sense of sin, apparently induced and reinforced in childhood: ‘This first expulsion from school must have greatly strengthened my conviction of sin, for my mother’s accusation had ...”

“... elements in the Army and elsewhere. Although the Army played no direct role in the crisis, the self-invoked threat of an Army coup hung over the political scene. But at all times the ruling classes were sufficiently in control of the transition from dictatorship to democracy to make a coup not only unnecessary but also liable to be destructive of their ...”

“... that Dan Carden, once a Corbynite Green New Dealer, now convenes the Blue Labour Group and writes self-flagellating articles calling for a wave of reindustrialisation through rearmament. The remainder of the party’s left that has not been expelled or gagged implores its leaders to take on vested interests and raise taxes on the rich. All agree on the need ...”

“... sets out six specimens equidistant in a row. Each is a fragment, but each has the quality of self-possession characteristic of McEwen. From left to right they are a broken bud, a small leaf lightly withered, a larger leaf also withered, a piece of bark, three seed pods, a torn branch and a sycamore seed with one wing missing. Writing about another series ...”

“... was a dreamwork, both in the sense that it performs work on dreams and in the sense it gives of a self-amusing dream of what intellectual work could be.’ But then what about the writing and the thinking? Connor has some good commentary on those activities too.Bachelard was born in 1884 in Bar-sur-Aube, a town in eastern France. He taught science in a school ...”

“... of experience. Auden was catalytically inspiring, but embodied forces dangerous to Britten’s self-protective habits. The catalysis made Britten into the finest setter of English there has yet been, but with these skills and sensibilities enriched he had to return to the private place of creativity in which he could have complete control. Perhaps Auden in ...”

“... Rousseauist spectacles, to dream of a society of peasant proprietors and the kind of Spartan self-sufficiency that had haunted Rousseau. Which of the two was ‘right’ is a question that everyone is likely to answer in terms of his own political preferences and private principles. We can at least agree that, whatever the theoretical merits of the two ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... by some intrusive editorialising (‘I insist I have not made this up’). There is some of the self-regarding tricksiness of Midnight’s Children, though there is more of the mainstream American novel in Rushdie than one could see there. Like Tristram Shandy, the work begins ab ovo, or ab semine, and Rushdie can’t resist some glances back: ‘There are ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... that Wilson somewhat neglected his journal. There is now only a little of the characteristic self-absorption of the true journal-keeper, to whom nothing human is alien as long as he has a part in it – and to whom his own absurdities are as worthy of record as anything else: – Blond woman violinist with Portia-like yellow hair – Ruth Posselt ...”

“... cleanse off blood pollution – a practice which at least one famous Greek philosopher regarded as self-contradictory. Even in the fourth century Macedonian armies were purified by marching between the two halves of a dog, whose severed body was thought to have created an absorptive zone. The Greeks preserved a strict sense of the sanctity of place, holding ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... I didn’t use then and don’t use now. I ask at the cycle shop if anyone has thought of making self-adhesive puncture patches. No one has. 15 October, Yorkshire. If Mr Parkinson and Miss Keays would only get together they could call the baby Frances Parkinson Keays. 20 December, New York. A sign on Seventh Avenue at Sheridan Square: ‘Ears pierced, with ...”