“... to what is considered politically correct in arts faculties. But other aspects of Jenkyns’s self-assurance are more troubling. It comes as a shock to encounter the assumptions behind his generalising characterisations of national identity, as he speculates on whether ‘the British are by temper more empirical, less theoretical than the Germans.’ This ...”

“... it stands out as a relic of the nanny state, doling out money for a service which ought to be self-financing like everything else. On the Treasury accounts it looks like a huge recurrent subvention to an indigent relative. Nobody with power thinks any longer about its role in making a reality of the myth that we are all equal before the law. Long before ...”

“... Tsarist officials were indeed to prove more effective governors and better prophets than their self-confident critics in the liberal and radical intelligentsia.’ Durnovo argued that no political reform could satisfy the basic socio-economic demands of the Russian masses after 1905 (the failure of the Provisional Government in 1917 was to prove him ...”

“... the tongue; and the delight in exact verbal repetition, so puzzling to many modern readers and so self – evident to anyone who shares in the liturgical tradition of either Judaism or Christianity. ‘The need to utter’ reminds us that what matters in the Bible is not to convey a ‘message’ – as though the Bible were a book of dogmas or a handbook of ...”

“... that all of this is perhaps cold comfort, and I do think that is so. The notion of a miracle is self-cancelling. If miracles did happen, they would be part of the natural order too, there being no place else for them to happen in. Conversely, to say something isn’t miraculous – that it isn’t intrinsically inexplicable – is, I suppose, just to say ...”

“... whine. He reacts badly to criticism or challenge, like a man who feels a carefully constructed self-image is under improper duress. Essentialists can search for continuity of political belief in the man, some backbone of principle stiffening his curriculum vitae, but such investigation, if conducted with any degree of realism, is not encouraging, and ...”

“... was 25, his friend the dramatist Gerhart Hauptmann told him he thought him capable of love and self-sacrifice. Wedekind was not particularly pleased: ‘for me such feelings denote weakness rather than strength. They would not reinforce my moral fibre, but undermine me.’ It sounds as though he might be planning a toughening-up programme for himself. The ...”

“... back to the poet, as Edward Thomas’s strange excitements would refer them: the absence of self is the real offering in Blunden’s poems. Like Ralph Hodgson, whom he knew well in Japan, he suffers from anthologies, and his poetry is best browsed through. He made great friends with Adrian Bell, the country novelist who wrote Corduroy and became the ...”

“... a Romanian speaking excellent English picks up the phone. ‘Who is this?’ I demand with as much self-righteousness as I can muster. ‘Oh, do excuse me, this is a foreign trade company. You must have the wrong number.’And then there is the notorious Intercontinental Hotel, which has been described by one former Romanian intelligence chief as less a hotel ...”

“... from the almost abstract hi-tech-speak of the white-collar worker. ‘I think it would be in your self-interest as well as ours,’ Dark-suit No 1 is saying, ‘if you could see your way to this before too long, because he is one of the key councillors.’ ‘If we don’t discuss the pros and cons of what’s been happening,’ Dark-suit No 2 ...”

“... demonstrations and stunts. The dockers’ victory and its consequence, an astounding surge in the self-confidence of the British working class, was a lesson to Tom Mann all his life. He saw how the workers, in the course of their own action, changed from hopeless down-and-outs into enthusiastic, disciplined and rational human beings. It was a change, he ...”

“... of Labour’s moral high ground on the tax front and the realisation that their own economic self-interest might dictate otherwise. I must confess that I find the holier-than-thou streak in British political culture a mite off-putting. One needs only to hint that wholly state-run provision of a service might not always be the optimum choice, or even that ...”

“... deal with the Romans and the Italian Renaissance, when memorial art is most gloriously secular and self-fulfilling and least concerned with death. As Colvin points out, the architect’s best client is a dead client, or at least one who will be dead by the time they move in, and will therefore not require drainage, windows, or any other facilities that might ...”

“... they will affect our reading in ways that we can do nothing about. Only if we are philosophically self-conscious do we have a chance of successfully measuring the distance between ourselves and ancient and Medieval thinkers. Coleman brings some very heavy assumptions to her task. Unfortunately they get in the way of her scrutinising her own philosophical ...”

“... New Zealand Verse, which historians often use as a marker in the establishment of a distinct and self-reliant New Zealand literature. In 1951, the year Curnow, then aged 39, moved to Auckland to take up a lectureship at the university, I enrolled as a student. I remember my first sight of him, walking through Albert Park – and of course his lectures and ...”