“... woman’ who worked as a newspaper journalist, but as her marriage with X went on, she became more self-confident, as Adler was when she reviewed Kael, but also more subservient: she did the cooking, she told the biographers to cease and desist, she accepted that if she left the apartment in the middle of dinner to fetch parmesan, X might not be there when she ...”

“... the narrator’s father (only the fourth was ‘ever shot’). Even The Lazarus Project (2008), a self-declared novel, proceeds in parallel strands.What all these fictions have in common is a commitment to multiplicity. One character ‘launches into monolithic monologues’ – the opposite, it’s clear, of what a person ought to do. The narrator in ...”

“... in countries where the extermination of European Jews had little direct influence. The mature and self-critical way in which Germany – in contrast to, say, Japan or Italy – has dealt with the commemoration of the crimes committed in its name has led to exhortations to ‘learn from the Germans’. All this has enhanced the reputation of early 21st-century ...”

“... and the importance of ventilation in the prevention of tuberculosis; lists of flowers (‘Spurge, Self Heal, Ramping Fumitory … Common Agrimony, Hairy Willowherb, Lady’s Bedstraw’); and character sketches of villagers. Particularly delightful is a farmer called Jack Vaughan, who was said to enjoy dousing himself with perfume: ‘Oh, he’s a terror for ...”

“... 18th century have demonstrated in their different ways; it can also be the lifeblood of political self-knowledge and understanding. Cora’s Southampton inaugural address was also about heroism – one of the key links between these two extraordinary papers – as if she were saying that the register of affect must now take another turn. It must address the ...”

“... military for their part are much more fearful than the Jews realise of some kind of public Jewish self-defence. Provided that it is of a public nature. He does not represent the Argentine Armed Forces as monolithic: the author is obviously far more intimately acquainted with their divisions than he chooses to show here. Nor is his account of the extremes of ...”

“... course. The SDP is a party of prodigal sons (that is one reason why some of the stiffer and more self-righteous Liberals view it askance), and it is well-aware that repenting sinners should be greeted with fatted calves. But it will expect the repentance to be genuine; and it would take it amiss if the newcomers tried to hoist onto it a lot of old Labour ...”

“... mutual torment, and she was not. On the other hand, she could see an element of masochism and self-dramatisation in him, and he was blind to that. The torture had been going on ever since the birth of their first child – perhaps ever since Tolstoy forced his diary on his bride. His sexual appetite was insatiable and lasted his entire life: he was still ...”

“... exclusive concentration on the Examiner and the Drapier’s Letters has the slightly magisterial self-consciousness of the expert bestowing his attention on the lesser works of an author he knows too well. These writings are important, but they are not Swift’s most important or most characteristic works, even in relation to Ehrenpreis’s chosen ...”

“... of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government.’ Thus Madison in the Federalist, No 55, identifies the need for virtue in the citizens of a republic, while in No 57 he says that ‘the aim of every political constitution is or ought to be first to obtain for rulers, men who possess most ...”

“... recalled (presumably he is using old diaries) and, of course, Kaspersen kills whales as a way to self-knowledge. He also dreams a wonderful dream of the meeting of an elephant and a singing whale ... Then comes the accidental encounter with the Japanese in 1926, a relationship which, for van der Post, was to be renewed in frightful circumstances 15 years ...”

“... Phaedrus. In fact, if one looks at the text, Phaedrus contrasts rather than compares Alcestis’s self-sacrifice with Achilles’s decision to die in order to avenge his lover Patroclus. The gods, he says, gave more honour to Achilles because his devotion, as the younger member of a homosexual couple, was extraordinary: by implication, Phaedrus thinks the ...”

“... exercise of power. And it irritates me enormously.’ Lucas has constructed a professional self which is the opposite of the stereotype Hollywood director, riding-booted, temperamental, flamboyantly brilliant, political. His inconspicuous mufti and straitlaced life-style disdains the world of moguls and casting-couch morals. Against the ‘old ...”

“... grounds to treat his life as a key to the successes of Georgian intellectual life, its far-sighted self-confidence and almost violent optimism. His most famous sermon, delivered on the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot’s defeat and the Glorious Revolution’s triumph, notoriously imagined ‘laying gunpowder, grain by grain, under the old building of error ...”

“... involve a recurring set of dilemmas. Here’s one: what would be a good name for the knowing and self-assured woman all his heroes fall for? Armadillo’s answer is Flavia, a name not just Italian but Roman, patrician – a name embodying a test, in fact, because its bearer insists on being called ‘Flahvia’ rather than ‘Flayvia’, the wrong ...”