“... in Eugene Onegin, is that Pushkin’s attitudes towards the country were as conflicted as the twin self the novel in verse projects. When he stayed at Mikhailovskoye after graduating from his elite Petersburg lycée he was both delighted and impatient. ‘I remember how happy I was with village life, Russian baths, strawberries and so on,’ he wrote. ‘But ...”

“... than it does about democracy. Empires tend to give peoples who have enjoyed them a markedly self-absorbed, provincial outlook: a fate Brazilians have no more been able to escape than Britons or Americans. For the fact – obvious enough in any comparative perspective – is that the local preservation of democracy is no particular merit of ...”

“... words, whether the officer who killed Peach had had a lawful reason for striking him – namely, self-defence or to restore order. The theory the coroner was pressing on the jury was that the violence of other demonstrators elsewhere in Southall was so outrageous that it justified any degree of retaliatory force. But not a single police witness had suggested ...”

“... in 1962 after a run of terrible by-election results, this was entirely typical of his undeviating self-interest, although in that Night of the Long Knives it turned out he had been so sharp he cut himself, fatally. Not surprisingly, throughout his life he was disliked by many and hated by quite a few. At Eton, he received 13 blackballs in the election for the ...”

“... My Promised Land doesn’t make the most powerful and obvious arguments for the right of Jews to self-determination in what is now the state of Israel: the fact of its being enshrined in international law, in the form of UN Resolution 181, reaffirmed in the declarations of independence of both Israel, in 1948, and Palestine, in 1988. No matter the actions of ...”

“... best remember, when she portrayed the painter Gwen John in a biopic. This included one of John’s self-portraits in which she painted herself nude. Not unlike Gwen John in looks and figure, Anna did it nude herself though she would have been well into her fifties at the time. It was superb and also courageous, actors who are so often mocked for their ...”

“... a more literary and intellectual romance with the Dantesque Beatrice. In scenes of tortuously self-regarding rhetoric, Richard insists on having everything out in the open; Robert is appalled by the fact that communications he thought had been secret were not; Bertha is upset that her duplicity has been revealed to Robert at her expense. Eventually all ...”

“... with which names are bestowed in English-speaking countries is also ideological, a sometimes quite self-conscious expression of an assumed freedom to name children whatever parents want, another of those ‘ancient liberties’ that would in earlier centuries have been confidently ascribed to the Anglo-Saxons. Which is ironic, since one of the most dramatic ...”

“... There is a cruelty there (is it possible that it was ‘just’ thoughtlessness?). There is self-justification that can make some sense to one’s own conscience. But it’s very hard to buy once you put Peter into the equation, and then on top of that add me, both of us at the high point of adolescence. I think I know something of the power of the ...”

“... to the beefiest emu; Eleanor Crow’s dark silhouette on Max Porter’s book (the designer surely self-selecting for the commission) is more muted and harmonious, with no delineation of an eye, not exactly comforting – beak open – but short on actual threat. The Crow of the text comes closer to the Hughesian archetype, smelling to human nostrils of ...”

“... Middle Eastern wars, which he blamed on Bush as much as Obama. This was shown to be a wishful self-revision, but he had been laying plans for longer than most people realised. Six days after Obama’s victory in 2012, he filed a trademark application for the phrase ‘Make America Great Again’ and he was soon tweeting that the election was illegitimate ...”

“... reproduced in magazines. He was the polar opposite of Courbet, whom he scorned for his bombast, self-promotion and politics; although, when Courbet’s L’Atelier came up for sale in 1897, Degas tried to buy it. He objected to any kind of formal dress (yet according to Reff, ‘rarely refused a white-tie dinner invitation’). He mocked his sculptor friend ...”

“... responsibility-free years to do whatever he liked and read whatever he wanted. He set out on a self-directed programme of reading in the history of science and related areas of psychology and philosophy. After that he stayed on at Harvard, teaching a range of courses in the history of science, and wrote his first book, The Copernican Revolution (1957). The ...”

“... on intergenerational patrimony and the unpredictability of care needs, it is surprising that self-interest alone hasn’t spurred greater pressure for reform.In its early medical meaning, as today, ‘crisis’ denoted the turning point of a disease – before death or recovery. Its juridical and political senses also signify a decisive moment ...”

“... health, David Owen, had told the House of Commons that he was funding an effort to make Britain self-sufficient in blood products by 1977. But he was given a new brief in 1976. The Labour government dropped the commitment to self-sufficiency soon after, apparently for financial reasons. Much of the relevant ...”