“... upgrade, but he also claims that what he’s doing isn’t ‘about buying passports; it’s about self-actualising as a global citizen.’ Citizenship by investment is fairer than citizenship by birth, he contends, since it outwits fate (even if only for the rich). St Kitts is no longer alone in the citizenship industry, which according to ...”

“... system (one millennium before Copernicus) and explains it to her students with the casual self-assurance of an Ivy League professor. Outside her elegant classroom, Christian monks with Taliban-like beards swarm the streets. She has also been enlisted in other ideological battles. A Google search reveals her as an early feminist, a black martyr (she ...”

“... their own independent state has had the effect of highlighting the scale of the obstacles to their self-determination. Iran, Turkey and the Iraqi government are now united as never before and in a position to enforce a blockade on the KRG; there is a limit to what the Kurds can do by way of retaliation. ‘The Kurdish leadership in Iraq doesn’t really have ...”

“... Chandler and Harold Q. Masur’. Manhattan Beach is itself a crime story, and, to its credit, a self-reflexive one. The question of what happened to Eddie Kerrigan drives the plot, leading Anna into the underworlds her father inhabited as a union boss’s lackey, and later as Dexter Styles’s ‘ombudsman’. When Anna first runs into Dexter, at one of his ...”

“... calm vanity in interpreting all the deals. Some have seen the book as a grandiloquent and self-serving celebration of the way efficiency killed Hollywood, following decades in which the business had been lyrically unbusinesslike. But while there can be no doubt that Ovitz was a uniquely obsessed operative, if it hadn’t been him it would have been ...”

“... viewed as lenient but which polarised Hungarian politics and set Hungary ‘on the path to a self-declared illiberal democracy’. Also little known but described expertly by Tooze is the reaction of China to the GFC, in what is perhaps the only unambiguous success story of this period. China’s rapid growth in earlier decades had been built on ...”

“... the purges, the attempted coup, the smears – demonstrate (or confirm) the degree to which the self-appointed political ‘centre’ has drifted to the right, leading the spectrum of political possibility to contract accordingly. Corbyn’s left reformism is mild by the standards of earlier generations, by the standards of some other European ...”

“... trouble. Lea had been elected to the US Senate in 1911 aged 31 and evidently had a penchant for self-publicity. With three junior officers and three sergeants, all Americans, he set off for Amerongen with the aim of snatching the Kaiser from Bentinck’s château and delivering him to Paris (or, as he much later bragged, to the US government, which would be ...”

“... nonsense; and, more recently, Daniel Dennett, who indicts the discipline as largely ‘self-indulgent, clever play’. In almost every case, the philosopher who criticises philosophy wants his colleagues to redirect their intellectual efforts away from the ineffable, nonsensical or confused towards more worthwhile endeavours; a methodological ...”

“... Israeli population constitutes a national group, whether Palestinian Arabs have the right to self-determination – don’t arise. As a first step, the Palestinian Authority must be persuaded to transform itself from the pseudo-government of a non-existent state into a campaigning leadership heading a mass movement for equal rights across Israel and the ...”

“... with Iran. But Iranian policy is driven by strategic aims rather than impulses, and Trump’s self-congratulation may prove short-lived. How will he respond if Iran hits back harder?10 ...”

“... and the farm managers. Extremely concerned with his public reputation, he took pride in his own self-control. Those who knew him, however, were aware that he had a fierce temper. He was ‘tremendous in his wrath’, Jefferson recalled after Washington’s death, and slaves learned to steer clear when he was provoked. Like other owners, Washington relied ...”

“... on London by Brussels. It has always been one of the EU’s conditions. It is a demand rooted in self-interest: a large competitor economy on its doorstep represents a challenge. If the UK were given access to the EU market, it might succeed in undercutting EU firms. This is why Brussels is insisting on guarantees regarding UK regulatory standards; it’s ...”

“... and was posthumously demoted to second-tier status by the modernist criteria of difficulty and self-critique.This ambitious catalogue to an exhibition curated by Melissa Buron of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, brings fresh eyes and careful research to his work. James Tissot: Fashion and Faith, opened at the Legion of Honour Museum in San Francisco ...”

“... a tank firing fifty quid notes over the lawn’, as Dein put it. A year later, José Mourinho, the self-described ‘Special One’, rocked up from Portugal. In 2008, Sheikh Mansour and the Abu Dhabi United Group came for Manchester City. Meanwhile Ferguson kept on winning and winning until he retired. Leicester, somehow, won the Premier League in ...”