“... 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 ...”

“... bigger transitions in Septology – switches in time from the sexagenarian Asle to his childhood self or from one Asle to the other – are usually prefaced with an ‘I see’: should I ask Åsleik to put the chair in front of the window there, I think, but no, how can I even think that, of course Ales’s chair has to stay where it’s always been, how ...”

“... not discern [them] from Inglish men’. Exile, voluntary or otherwise, provided opportunities for self-reinvention. Leonard Ragapo, who came to England with Raleigh, became a society celebrity and generous host, ‘not after the ordinarie rude manner of the Indians’, according to the adventurer Robert Harcourt, ‘but in a more civill fashion, and with much ...”

“... in history.’In their subsequent careers the war artists often seemed to be at a loss. His nude self-portrait apart, Spencer’s reputation, for example, is more firmly based in the Burghclere chapel murals from the First War and the Glasgow shipbuilding pictures from the Second than on anything else he did. English romantics, encouraged and protected by ...”

“... France)’, we have to assume that the parenthetical additions are marks of his impulse to private self-aggrandisement. One long paragraph unspools his imaginary employments: ‘captain in the Royal Netherlands Army, plant manager, attaché to the embassy in Peking, banker, clown (famous), painter (famous), archivist-palaeographer, midshipman (aboard the last ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... eat and drink: all were determined by your fluid temperament. Dietetic knowledge was a matter of self-diagnosis, informed by your own appetites and routines. The governing rationale was analogy, a kind of thinking that made everyone both physician and poet. A popular manual declared that ‘Every sort of Food hath its operation in the Body, and on the ...”

“... of gall.’ He also observed, rather unkindly, that Cecil had been ‘a little blinded with the self-love of your own counsel in holding together of this parliament’. Even the king who owed him so much wasn’t convinced that Cecil held the key to the political process. Administrative skill wasn’t everything in early modern politics. Among those who ...”

“... no doubt burnished in Reminiscences.It is a tremendous read and a masterclass in carefully crafted self-deprecation as one of the most effective ways of boasting. Harrison comes across as an outsider who always offered a refreshing challenge to the insiders (the ‘Gladstone treatment’ is rolled out more than once); as someone who didn’t take herself ...”

“... from the start. Rereading the novel, I kept thinking about Mickey’s transformation from naif to self-actualised cynic in The Switch and wished that Jackie had been given room to grow. The early scene in which Jackie resists Ordell is particularly telling. We’ve already seen Ordell post bond for someone he wants to silence. We know what’s meant to ...”

“... wealth with the remark: ‘It is extremely difficult for the best of Men to divest themselves of Self-Interest.’ Indeed, the foundations for Connecticut Hall, the oldest surviving building on Yale’s campus, were laid in 1750 by a team of free and enslaved workers. The anti-slavery movement took encouragement from the American Revolution. In New ...”

“... military force at will, with no legitimating arguments beyond the pathological fiction of its self-proclaimed superiority.What does all this mean for Venezuela? For now, the post-Maduro regime looks a lot like Maduro’s: his vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, was immediately sworn in as acting president. There are widespread rumours, fanned by the White ...”

“... and fled to Florence, avoiding the disastrous Essex Rebellion and its vindictive aftermath.In self-imposed Continental exile, he offered his services as an intelligencer on matters concerning the British Isles to Ferdinando I, grand duke of Tuscany, whose concern to see a non-Habsburg nominee succeed Elizabeth I prompted him to send Wotton on a mission to ...”

“... coiffed, ultimate older sister’, possessed of enviable calm and seemingly preternatural self-assurance. Being with her was oddly soothing: ‘In her world, nothing was a big deal, and everything was just as it should be.’ She attended Melania’s wedding in Palm Beach: 350 guests attended, including the Clintons and P. Diddy; reportedly, the only ...”