“... in red miners’ overalls – members of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). When the EFF’s self-styled commander in chief, Julius Malema, was announced the applause lasted for three minutes. Then he bellowed his first words: ‘Long live the defiant spirit of Winnie Mandela, long live! Forward to expropriation of land without ...”

“... for many years and the problem is now compounded by the fact that up to 30 per cent of staff are self-isolating at any one time, sometimes simply because someone in their household is showing mild symptoms – a child who may just have a cold, for instance. Doctors who work in other hospital departments are terrified of inadvertently spreading the virus ...”

“... or limits about the difference between right or wrong’. As for the young man: was this self-destruction, or did the system destroy him? Either way, this is the habitat that produces the great minds behind the some of the world’s most sophisticated modern spying weapons. Now imagine how these cyber-geniuses feel when they leave the military and ...”

“... should have been the high point of her career.’ We don’t begrudge her these moments of self-pity, but McGregor makes less effort to help us understand the couple’s son, Frank. The only time he visits Doc in hospital, he struts around ‘doing something on his phone’ and then abruptly leaves for ‘a work thing’. He has an ...”

“... defiant statements (Byrd used his to proclaim his allegiance to the pope). McCarthy attributes his self-assurance in both the highest and the lowest musical styles of the day to the difficult trajectory of his career. ‘He did not merely survive constant change: it made him even more capable.’The scant biographical detail means that it is difficult to ...”

“... notaries, now to be found in the city archives: pairs of dice; a bare bottom; a note-to-self: ‘All that a man has is hanging by a fine thread, and the most secure things can collapse quite suddenly.’ Merchants surrounded themselves with fine things. Silks could be draped and handled, jewels hung round the neck. And yet this wealth was secured by ...”

“... to admire the West from a tender age do not hesitate to defend the motherland in debates with self-righteous Westerners. They have no qualms calling for boycotts of companies or individuals who behave in a manner ‘insulting’ to Chinese culture. Career choice distinguishes urban millennials from other generations: they are exceptionally ...”

“... contrast to the more ‘European’ Greece, caught in an ideological quagmire and bent on economic self-destruction. True, there were ominous signs here and there (Turkey’s denial of the Armenian holocaust; the arrests of journalists; the unresolved status of the Kurds; calls for a greater Turkey which would resuscitate the tradition of the Ottoman ...”

“... as an unpredictable liminal force. But can scapegoat theory do anything other than bolster the self-justifying ideology of witch-hunters? There is a more worldly story, which we can piece together from the details of Bratrud’s interactions, and by considering his intimacy with those involved in the revival. Bratrud is there when the chief announces the ...”

“... geographies written by scholars whose main source was the Bible. (The evangelical adventurer and self-publicist John MacGregor found this a problem on a canoe trip down the Jordan in 1868.) Aspirant surveyors quickly discovered that they needed the co-operation of local tribal leaders, some of whom collaborated in the hope that it would encourage a British ...”

“... and another to claim that it is their defining feature. Israel has recast antisemitism in such a self-serving way that it has become difficult to distinguish between those who take Israel to task as a Jewish state, and those who criticise it as a Jewish state: as an exclusionary ethnocracy and an occupying power. Israel has also appropriated the right to ...”

“... grief. After 1918 magic was no longer just an emanation from the cosmos, but something inside the self, closer to the unconscious and subconscious states around which psychology and psychiatry would build new ways of understanding how people ...”

“... others. Egan’s second novel, Look at Me, fits into this category: Charlotte, an impetuous, self-obsessed model left unrecognisable after a car crash, sells the rights to her life story, and later her identity, to the founder of Ordinary People, a website that hosts individualised pages (called PersonalSpaces) with ‘Photographs … Childhood ...”

“... in my adolescent female patients in Edinburgh, which occasionally lead to localised outbreaks of self-cutting, bulimia or anorexia.) O’Sullivan asks a young Nicaraguan man why women are so often the victims, not men: ‘I don’t know,’ he says, ‘but I think maybe the girls are weak and grisi siknis makes them strong.’ O’Sullivan agrees, and notes ...”

“... most members are well-heeled professionals with conventional tastes and ambitions, and a tinge of self-delusion. For Sampson, the significant fact about the big clubs of the 1960s was that they no longer fulfilled their Victorian function of bringing classes and interest groups together for a social purpose. They had joined the dignified rather than the ...”