“... that of L’Etranger – but his sense of displacement remains. Navigation of a Rainmaker has the self-importance of a work that knows the significance of its themes. Often this leads Mahjoub to try to squeeze too much life out of his images: ‘The map of the Sudan looked like a face, the face of a man gazing down; the face of a man in mourning.’ More ...”

“... wide range of reference and graciousness towards others is that it does not entirely work as a self-contained study of legal reasoning. In many cases one needs to trace the arguments backwards to see why the protagonists, including MacCormick, are saying what they are saying. It is partly to lend some unity to the many fragments of debate thus collected ...”

“... the disparate strands of conservatism were unified by the revival of the Cold War. Even the most self-interested aspects of conservative politics – lowering taxes on the rich, stopping unions from organising – became associated with a moral struggle against regimentation, bureaucracy and stultifying totalitarianism; even the bloodiest and most sordid ...”

“... itself the moment that he has learnt it. Perceval discovers his name in a kind of baptism into self-consciousness, or conscience: he has failed on a quest that he did not even know he was following. He has obeyed his instructions rather than his instincts and so lost the chance to heal the wounded king. What happens next would take a very long time to ...”

“... this, that Zionism offered the only solution to this predicament but, partly because of a lack of self-understanding and partly because of non-Jewish hostility or unconcern, was unable to prevent the ultimate disaster. Anti-semitism, central to this interpretation, appears simply as a given, a diabolus ex machina that requires no explanation: ‘It can be no ...”

“... extinction. He hoped that the development of new satellite suburbs – clusters of interconnected, self-sufficient, ‘slumless, smokeless cities’ – would slowly empty out the capital. London’s property bubble would burst; rents would fall; and the slums would be pulled down to make way for parks, gardens and allotments: ‘the country,’ Howard ...”

“... is it kind like a worker ant, like one of our own skin cells, programmed in earlier aeons to be self-sacrificing without choice? Or is it kind in the way that people are kind: innate inclination shaped by social learning, with the implication that other courses of action are possible? Of course the ape, or the human being, who learns a local custom may ...”

“... incest, involving respectively his valet and sister. The murder is generally accepted as an act of self-defence against a deranged servant, but according to Major Jones, who wrote down what he described as the Duke’s ‘confidence’, Ernst claimed that he had to ‘destroy’ his valet because he ‘threatened to propagate a report, and I had no ...”

“... These live-in fantasies were the acme of American hyper-realism – the media-saturated world of self-referential signs, the endless round of simulations without an original: just the sort of substitute for history that Hollywood Flatlands so brilliantly ...”

“... expertise To which they gave their best Desires and energies. Such oily handed zest Bypassed the self like love. But the factory, and the soul-destroying drudgery of assembly line work, was the fate of most. Autopia doesn’t adequately address this, either. There is a report from the assembly line, but it’s written by a student of technology, Dirk ...”

“... Lhuyd, whose work in Celtic philology would in the long run help to clear away the lumber of self-serving ethnic origin myths. The omission of Ireland, however, is more serious. The two-way links between Presbyterianism in the North of Ireland and its principal seminary, the University of Glasgow, contributed variously to the shaping of Scottish moral ...”

“... works”’. The question was not ‘what works?’ but ‘what works for us?’ And that self-interest on the part of multiple constituencies was precisely what made democracy work as a whole. Mair’s most original argument is that the decline of parties, of party government, and hence of party democracy as a whole can’t be blamed on either the ...”

“... ever ready with a fag and a corkscrew, always smiling, profoundly witty, and well on the way to self-ruin. This is accurate as far as it goes. But any serious view of Lambert’s music ought to take us further. As a composer, he suffered not from lack of brilliance or substance, but from going against the historical moment. Like Britten (whom he ...”

“... though unforeseen, consequence of those radical 1960s ideas of valuing individuals and encouraging self-expression and confidence. But, as Seamus Heaney put it, striving to write well helps tune the ear to the hum of a writer. It can illuminate how language works and how stories carry meaning. Digging into the archaeology of a story, into the structure of a ...”

“... he was too melancholy for cold warriors in either country to take seriously. Regular calls from self-satisfied German intellectuals for his father’s return turned the ambivalence Klaus had always felt towards Thomas Mann into alienation. When Klaus committed suicide in Cannes in May 1949, it was left to his sister Erika to spell out the meaning of the ...”