“... East is seen as perfectly reasonable. Often the very people who think it a sin to tamper with the self-expression of the markets are the first to call for lower immigration from poorer countries, though in all probability, it would take decades of inward migration to bring about the degree of ‘cultural difference’ that a bad patch of international ...”

“... she might fancy. This commission caused him some anxiety. Well-read up to a point, he was largely self-taught, his reading tending to be determined by whether an author was gay or not. Fairly wide remit though this was, it did narrow things down a bit, particularly when choosing a book for someone else, and the more so when that someone else happened to be ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... could not have been ruled both gently and effectively. Stephen Greenblatt, who, in Renaissance Self-Fashioning, writes so memorably on More and Wyatt, impairs his case by too easily calling Henry VIII a Stalin, for the ambitions and resources of 20th-century tyranny were beyond the imagination of Tudor England. Protesting writers were not alienated ...”

“... Protestant piece of writing: there is the assertion of uncompromising principle, a strong self-justifying theme which runs throughout the sermon, an affirmation of the work ethic (that brutal verb ‘to business’, echoing the anti-Home Rule slogan, ‘Ulster means business’), and finally there is the idea of being born again. Imaginatively, this ...”

“... is, after all, nothing to prevent a male reader from discovering those same signs of strain and self-division in the Freudian text. To this extent theory would seem to occupy a gender-neutral ground, being neither (as Daly would have it) an instrument of male repression nor, on the other hand, a weapon of value only to women readers. All the same, one may ...”

“... 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 ...”