“... tension in Racine (or Boileau) between loyalty and independence, the strategies of criticism or self-defence as well as the strategies of praise. Such an approach would free him from the danger of reductionism. There remains the criticism that the very notion of ‘strategy’, like those of ‘manipulation’ or ‘mystification’, is anachronistic. I ...”

“... and sometimes in utter ignorance, by the proletariat of economically-depressed areas. The self-taught bootmaker, a voracious reader, would pore over the latest ‘red’ theory, however insane; while the workers who gathered round him, believing and following every word he spoke, scarcely looked at the new socialist classics (even assuming they could ...”

“... live in (if sometimes suspecting the right verb might be ‘wallow in’) this intensely feminine, self-concentrated, despairing world of the heart which has welled up from one super-sensitive unconscious: a world in which the only events that can possibly matter are those which affect a woman in her relationships of love. But there are other more robust ...”

“... many of those which have separate sexes have probably evolved that habit as a method of avoiding self-fertilisation. Animals are less often hermaphrodites – no mammals or birds are so. This may be because there is often a law of increasing returns for male investment. A red deer stag which was 10 per cent larger would probably increase his harem size by ...”

“... why sentience is fundamental to moral standing. But without the full Utilitarian metaphysic of self and action, the appeal to sentience is an appeal to a moral intuition which those who take an entirely permissive or an entirely restrictive view of abortion policy and decisions will not share. The Utilitarianism which Sumner develops is of the humane ...”

“... do we make of the evidence? At first acquaintance, Gilbert’s work is painstakingly neutral and self-effacing. The facts, impeccably turned out, form ranks and march along in strict chronological tempo. The author does no more, apparently, than open a window from which we can see the procession go by. But this, of course, is passionate and committed ...”

“... and which he now, naturally, fears (‘Men who are going to die are apt to become garrulous with self-revelations’). It is an intimate, private story, which arises from the misfortunes of the daughter of some old friends. They, in their frustration and fear, have turned to their famous acquaintance for his assistance and he has responded with determined ...”

“... is impressive, all the more because it’s clear that he’s naturally a reticent man who dislikes self-exposure. And inside the intelligentsia it may well be that these are no longer minority opinions. But in the population at large surely they are. Certainly in Ben Jonson’s England such a secular experimental attitude to ethics was virtually unknown. This ...”

“... by Alec Guinness’s extraordinary face. Smiley is by now irretrievably lost in the realm of self-parody, and Le Carré’s efforts to invest him with heroic substance seem ever more wan and automatic. As before, we know just a handful of things about him: that he has an unfaithful wife, that he is obsessed with his opposite number in Moscow, the ...”

“... our desertion by the sour smudge on the horizon, from the erosion of labels, it is the value of self-definition. No one, not even the poet whose shadow halts above us alter dawn and before dark, will have our trust. We resist your patronage, your reflective leisure. The extra-historical landscapes he creates are didactic enough, but while they condemn ...”

“... to govern, ‘in power or in opposition’, as Balfour once observed, it was a strange, anarchic, self-destructive phase. Much new light is shed on these mysteries by Alan Sykes’s fascinating new book, which covers the 1903-13 period. He traces again the now familiar story of Joseph Chamberlain’s crusade for tariff reform, which captivated the party ...”

“... of us. The exhaustion of Modernism, the aridity of Communist life, the tedium of the unrestrained self and the meaninglessness of the monolithic political chants all indicate that a long era is coming to a close.’ What will follow? Bell admits ignorance, yet adds: ‘I am bound, in the faith of my fathers, to the thread, for the chord of culture – and ...”

“... a dislikeable woman who dislikes the people around her and is duly disliked in return. The air of self-regarding discontent that presides over this book made me suspect that the stories for children with which Penelope Lively made her reputation were of the kind admired by progressive parents rather than by children themselves. However, my consultant in the ...”

“... to pure science, as if ‘physics’ were an end in itself, less a philosophical exercise than a self-justifying religion? This question is worth asking, because the life and work of L.D. Landau exemplifies the traditional ethic of pure science to the highest, despite the morally bankrupt, politically vicious and socially corrupt environment in which history ...”

“... designed by Perrault for its east facade have no precedent in Classical Antiquity. They are self-consciously modern. He relates this architectural manifesto to the contemporary conflict between ancients and moderns, in which one of the leading supporters of the moderns was Claude’s brother Charles. He reminds us of the political aspect of the ...”