“... Having accidentally used lighter fluid instead of rubbing alcohol, the visual trick turned into self-immolation.With interdisciplinarity comes the risk of being seen as a dilettante, but July’s first short story collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You (2007), was well received and won the Frank O’Connor Award. Like her films, these stories are ...”

“... In​ How to be Topp (1954), Nigel Molesworth unveils ‘the Molesworth Self-Adjusting Thank-you Letter’. The sender is instructed to strike out the words which don’t apply, before thanking the present-buyer for theTrain. Tractor. germ gun. kite.delicious present. sweets.Space pistol. Toy socks.The letter ends with a blank space to be filled in with a date to remind the recipient when the next present is due ...”

“... to realise that the gaunt extras on the film are from Maxglan, a detention camp. The chapters are self-contained, almost short stories in their own right, and aside from Wilzek’s (narrated in the first person) they’re written in free indirect speech, alternating Pabst (who has the largest share of the chapters) with Trude, his mother, Erika, his ...”

“... task of writing. Through their work, they are transformed. This might save them from oblivion or self-denial, but it also exposes them to the jealousy of other creatures.In her 1975 essay on écriture féminine, Hélène Cixous encouraged her female readers to ‘write, let no one hold you back, let nothing stop you: not man; not the imbecilic capitalist ...”

“... ministerial years, he was often too busy for books), and his impatience and lack of intellectual self-confidence sometimes show in these pieces, with their repetitions and broad-brush passages. Short sections providing sudden insights, provocative suggestions or increases in rhetorical pressure show him at his best. Midway through a long contribution to a ...”

“... mid-20th-century heyday of criticism has long since evaporated, replaced by a conspicuous lack of self-assurance. I sometimes wonder whether academics in English literature have forsaken the primacy of the word for the world – rich in possibilities for impact, outreach and activism – that exists beyond the page. Collini is at pains to stress that his ...”

“... does not blot out the sun completely you have a sky-full that an English Duke could not buy him-self. I could shoot a record percentage up here with a crut of an English antique 12 bore shotgun let alone the Griffin and Howe Springfield I had them send me back in Key West 1931. And I would not need the telescopic sight as we all have that here anyway. Did ...”

“... they could find their place in the Hegelian progress of everything existing towards the self-realisation of Geist. ‘Perhaps even the personal anguish of his son’s suicide and the failure of his life’s work for peace had a value and a meaning of its own, if only he were wise enough to react creatively’: readers of Charlotte M. Yonge’s ...”

“... went for soft options and easy answers during what were long sad years of decline. Inflation is a self-inflicted wound: successive governments caused it by trying to do too much too quickly by way of deficit financing. Grossly excessive government expenditure is the main cause of inflation. In other words, inflation is politically-induced and caused by ...”

“... reason can only be an exercise in manipulative verbal fetishism or in more or less inadvertent self-deception. This is not a topic on which any modern Anglo-Saxon moral philosopher has had anything of much weight to say, although it is clearly the most important single question in moral philosophy. Not only does moral philosophy at present lack an ...”

“... pathologically ashamed was but the return to roost of fledglings hatched in the nest of Jewish self-assertion: ‘the very notion of being chosen by such a God will produce the retribution appropriate to it.’ Yahweh is the projection of Israel’s desire to be above other nations. Election, the chosen people, the choosing God – all are the fantasy of a ...”

“... book is full of her pathetic letters home, and of her complaints against her father’s fierce self-righteousness. And then: Dad turned up one night on my doorstep, really far gone in his cups. He could hardly stand up, he was so bloody squiffy. I let him in, and I said, ‘For Christ’s sake, Dad, what are you doing in London this late?’ It was after ...”

“... colophon testify to a fierce will to survive (perhaps also to the new style at Harmondsworth). Self-evidently, at least one rebirth has been achieved – although I would not bet on eternal renewal. As with its predecessor, the principle on which Firebird’s assembly is made seems to be that of multiple cross-section of work in progress. The editor has ...”

“... delivered in Oxford over a period that extends from 1928 to 1963, supplemented by a number of self-effacing but substantial contributions by Bliss himself. Both Bliss and Shippey knew Tolkien personally; both consulted him about their work; and both take him very seriously indeed. The intensity of their interest is remarkable and perhaps surprising, for ...”

“... wanted to buy, or for having clung too long to closed shops and excessive manning levels. This self-lacerating mood contributes to Mrs Thatcher’s other discovery, which is that in hard times the Trade Union movement knuckles under. No wonder that a poll the other day disclosed that public anxiety about militancy or radicalism in union leaderships was ...”