“... of the novel’s revenge action seems to belong on the screen. Throughout, there are nods to film, self-conscious references to the cinematic nature of chases and kills. Hornclaw, lurking unnoticed in the subway, ‘exists like an extra in a movie’, as if peripheral to her own slasher plot; when she and Bullfight meet for their final showdown in an abandoned ...”

“... was betrothed to the dauphin. Her portrait from c.1558, on loan from the Royal Collection, shows a self-assured young woman putting a ring on the fourth finger of her right hand: an allusion to her marriage, but also to her assumption of authority (over how many realms was open to question). In the reports of the Venetian ambassador, Mary is wilful and ...”

“... as opposed to Holy/Ghost’. The internal rhyme between ‘host’ and ‘Ghost’ seems like self-inflicted injury, the manifestation of a masochistic desire to be disfigured. But the logic of this poem, and the final rhyming couplet in which that logic is encoded, is that internalising pain is preparation for letting it go: ‘when I have been suffering ...”

“... the form of the ‘ordeal’ (the original is The Ordeal of Richard Feverel), the rocky climb to self-understanding. Harry’s ordeal is his father. It is only when he hardens into a separate personality, sealing off those ‘treasure-pits’ in his nature, that Roy stops puffing and the novel can end.One of Meredith’s most interesting narrative dodges ...”

“... of his run of success in the Ottercove world of society and journalism. While Waugh settled into a self-created world of Catholicism as a mock-aristocratic patriarch, Gerhardie remained an indeterminate sort of adventurer to the end, dying in 1977 at the age of 82 in his little flat near the BBC, for whom he had worked in the war years. For a long time he had ...”

“... little stroke, and I can confirm that hearing is the last sense to go before black-out. A certain self-distancing curiosity about medical, clerical, liturgical and psychological issues to do with death management doubtless has roots deeper than I care to explore, but my late father used to make a point of reading Jeremy Taylor’s ‘Holy Dying’ to ...”

“... I take E because I like it. I have a problem with anxiety and depression. When I go out I feel too self-conscious to enjoy myself. When I take E I forget about my problems. I feel like a completely different person. I feel equal to the people around me. I know they are looking at me but I don’t care. Cocaine makes me paranoid. Heroin is too dangerous. I have ...”

“... How is it that the writer who once dedicated a novel to Jeffrey Bernard, one of the most prominent self-proclaimed ‘delinquents’ of the Eighties, can now join in dedicating her latest work to ‘Feltham Borstal’? Loss of the Good Authority is the sequel to an earlier collaboration between ATE and Tom Pitt-Aikens (TPA), Secrets of Strangers, and it only ...”

“... the applicability of Article 51, which permits the use of force in individual or collective self-defence until the Security Council has taken appropriate action, was generally recognised. In the case of the Falklands the United States then made available to Britain that diplomatic, logistical and intelligence support which the Joint Chiefs of Staff had ...”

“... transferred from oneself to a malignant world, there is no cause for personal reproach or loss of self-esteem.’ Let me admit that I only remember this because I wrote it: but the observation that ‘she has readily descended to the platitudes of economic chauvinism when co-operation with foreign governments has been on the agenda’ brings a disconcerting ...”

“... But he would not answer. When the silence became too painful, I played with my body.’ Totally self-absorbed and beset by possibly imaginary ailments of every kind, she tried every method to find happiness. On the West Coast there were, of course, plenty available: spiritualism, exorcism, massage, exercise, diet, meditation. A rich eccentric called ...”

“... have contained such phrases as ‘something withheld’ – ‘wears too fixed a smile’ – ‘self-suppression everywhere’. These seem to be symptoms of reviewer’s terror, a well-known complaint like athlete’s foot, which hamstrings the reviewer’s normal responses through the fear that he must have missed some quite obvious point all his ...”

“... work out, showing how much the State spent on each of them: why was the State so stingy? It was a self-education through high spirits, courage, indignation and pity. In class (she was 14) they were studying Gogol’s story of two landowners, an elderly couple, condemned by the teacher as contributing nothing to society. But ‘they both die, and Gogol ...”

“... for restitution to Jews. There is, finally, the risk that unification will be a great act of self-forgiveness. The division of Germany, however agonising for individuals and painful for the whole nation, was at least a permanent reminder that something had gone terribly wrong in recent German history. With that reminder gone, will the memory ...”

“... Tribe Dreaming by Marq de Villiers, a very similar figure (distinguished family, same sort of age, self-exile in America, anguished and appalled): but de Villiers is more impressed by the significance of the liberal Afrikaner strain and more alert to the varieties of Afrikanerdom, including what he describes as the ‘traditions of ...”