“... myself into seeing at Crinan. As Conrad knew, the sea will never go back to its pre-industrial self. In the long run, however, man-made imbalances will settle into new evolutionary equilibria, which may not be to man’s taste or advantage. Eventually the sea will win. In the shorter term, those who love it as much for what it hides as for what it reveals ...”

“... hidden last-minute talk between Chamberlain and Goering), the verse also conveys something of the self-contained world of MI5. There is no word in these diaries about any of the war’s turning points – Churchill’s takeover, the German attack on Russia, Pearl Harbor – or anything personal. Yet Liddell was a considerable man in every way. After winning ...”

“... of reference, the cartoonishness of some of his characters – and the unmistakable mood of self-congratulation. There’s also the fact that Rushdie has never mastered one of the most basic elements of storytelling, how to orient and grip an audience. The Satanic Verses was often accused, along with everything else, of being unreadable, something which ...”

“... work of Philip Webb, as of those Arts and Crafts architects who were his disciples. Austerity and self-abnegation are its hallmarks. You cannot relish Webb’s buildings without a feeling for puritanism. His was a life shot through with refusals: he would not compete, would not publish, would not join clubs and societies, would not marry, would not take fees ...”

“... attitude to life, unusual in a man in his late forties. The hero of After My Fashion is a self-portrait. Richard Storm has returned to Sussex from Paris, where he has made a name for himself with his critical appreciations of modern French writers. The first man he meets is a young painter, Robert Canyot, a traditionalist who thinks Richard far too ...”

“... obfuscating misbeliefs which can only be shown up and corrected by a knowledge of the past. This self-deception about the history of the family has particularly affected Western Europeans. Frenchmen, Germans or Englishmen, unless they have come across the work of recent historical sociologists, are likely to believe the following. That the co-resident ...”

“... and what Leslie Fiedler calls in his recent book on freaks ‘myths and images of the secret self’. None of these phenomena except possibly the last, however, can explain the fascination which the Elephant Man had for the working-class patrons of the show in the Whitechapel Road, or the social celebrities who flocked to drink tea with Merrick in his ...”

“... the Middle Ages were still going strong in 1789. Serfdom, patrimonial jurisdiction, the economic self-sufficiency of the estate centred on the great house were still realities determining the whole tone of society over huge tracts of Eastern and Central Europe. Even in what we have learned carelessly to call ‘advanced’ countries (the adjective itself is ...”

“... the Survey of London began life as one of those ventures in historical preservation and national self-regard which burgeoned in the 1890s and 1900s, and included the National Trust, Country Life, the Burlington Magazine, the Victoria County History, the Dictionary of National Biography and the Historical Monuments Commission. All were concerned with ...”

“... below the rank of gentleman were few indeed, though some – like Sir William Petty – were self-made. ‘Those of high rank’ tended to monopolise discussions, which accordingly often became ‘trivial’. Many ‘serious scientists’ ceased to attend. Sprat’s History of the Royal Society was a propagandist document, which attempted – whilst ...”

“... Gunn to the National Library of Scotland in 1971. But the letters seem unencumbered by writerly self-consciousness. Gunn and Shepherd didn’t meet often – Andrews notes that ‘their friendship exists mostly in their letters’ – but over more than forty years they developed a rare kind of ease. Shepherd addresses him as ‘Neil me lad’. He tells her ...”

“... in Britain for much of the 1920s and 1930s. For Keynes, this was proof that the economy was not a self-correcting machine: when unemployment was high, governments must use fiscal and monetary policy to increase aggregate demand, kickstarting the deployment of resources lying idle. But Keynes also saw the effects of hyperinflation in Weimar Germany. Far from ...”

“... Catholicism – or anything that looked like it – was not fully appreciated by James, and his self-curated role as Rex Pacificus was seen, by an increasingly Puritan Parliament, as unheroic, even iniquitous. Buckingham shifted his loyalties towards Charles, and away from peace towards war. He was, by this point, the country’s leading politician, on a ...”

“... Affairs at Johns Hopkins University, puts it, under Trump the US acts ‘in the same narrowly self-interested, frequently exploitative way as many great powers throughout history’. Trump is not an isolationist, to the extent the term has any useful meaning, and does not propose a withdrawal from world power. On the contrary, Brands writes, on some ...”

“... was German. But Patrik, who won’t be restricted by nationality, won’t accept Celan’s self-characterisation either. ‘Celan was writing in the middle of the world of multilingualism. In my opinion, he didn’t just translate, he sang in his translations. He sang in Romanian, Russian, French, Hebrew and English until he had no voice left.’ In ...”