“... of his Acquaintance’. The regulation of gentlewomen and ladies of quality was one of Nash’s self-imposed duties. He posed as Protector of the Fair, concerned that maiden virtue should not be rudely strumpeted in his domain. At the same time he set himself up as an overseer of the marriage market, ‘well placed’, as Eglin says, ‘to serve as either ...”

“... The writers themselves prefer ‘noir’ and there is nothing unreasonable in that. The most self-conscious stylist among them is Lucarelli. In Almost Blue a serial killer is on the loose in Bologna but the police psychologists are bewildered: the killer appears to change identity with each murder. Only the voice remains the same. The hero, Simone, is a ...”

“... For example, unlike the Concerned Women for America, for whom pornography is at odds with their self-declared mission ‘to protect and promote biblical values among all citizens – first through prayer, then education, and finally by influencing our society – thereby reversing the decline in moral values in our nation’, MacKinnon has been a ...”

“... Then the tree is struck by a cannonball, and the fall from it kills him. The march is a self-sufficient society. ‘We have everything,’ one character says, ‘we meet every need.’ There are doctors and nurses, carpenters and engineers, musicians and servants, coffins and guns. It is a ‘floating world’, an ‘uprooted civilisation’, a ...”

“... there was something that hearing or making music or both did for our likelihood of survival (or of self-preservation, or of transmitting our genes to posterity – different versions are in fashion from one decade to the next). And if it couldn’t be that we like music just for itself, then it couldn’t be that Neanderthals (or whatever) did either. Perhaps ...”

“... himself: ‘What should I do?’ He just sits there like a lump. Hesitation requires a level of self-consciousness that Parzival lacks. The equation of hesitation with inhibition leads to a rather limiting reading of Hamlet. Ziolkowski distinguishes between ‘hesitation’ – which happens at a ‘critical moment’ – and ‘delay’, which is a ‘more ...”

“... regarded the state as a means by which the less fortunate among us could be enabled to achieve the self-expression and moral fulfilment which is their right as creatures made in God’s image’, now writes: ‘Of all lessons the one which history most earnestly presses upon us and which we most persistently brush aside is “Beware the state!” ’ And he ...”

“... prohibitions. The climate of life is hostile and punitive. Competitiveness, orderliness, self-control, gravity – these are Puritan values that became part of his being. There can be no doubt that Newton’s unusual personality contributed a great deal to his way of life and perhaps to his scientific assumptions. Manuel has brought this before us ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... another matter. In the case of Balfour I doubt it. The outstanding features of his psychology were self-containment and fear of emotion, and there is no need to enter the bedroom to find them. As his first biographer, Blanche Dugdale, wrote in 1936, ‘his power of becoming aloof at will was perhaps the most important thing for an understanding of his ...”

“... been striven for. But, within, there existed, in Mr Wain’s phrase, ‘a heavily protected inner self that no one ever saw’, or no one except perhaps a friend or two of forty years’ standing. It is in Surprised by Joy that this dichotomy is most strikingly exhibited. The book is an autobiography and aims, Lewis says, at telling the story of his ...”

“... former believe that describing the facts of English usage is in itself a worthy, interesting and self-validating academic endeavour, whereas the latter feel that just describing the facts without attempting to ‘explain’ them in more general terms is unscientific. For the former, the English language is unique. For the latter, the English language is just ...”

“... someone else’s. The double may serve as a friend or as an enemy, just as the romantic ‘second self’ may be more or less the same as the first, or very different. Lennon, it turns out, was experienced as a double by a person whom he did not know, but who loved and hated him. Such are the hazards of stardom.He was deserted, to different degrees, by both ...”

“... 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 ...”