“... illusions, those properties of coherence and inherence that make a good piece of writing a self-sustaining world of words. If you attempt something of this kind, you assume the burden of telling your audience, with appropriate method and emphasis, what they will discover that they already know; and there can be no greater challenge to those skills of ...”

“... its manipulation, by the government of the United States. This is mannered and highly self-conscious prose, ungainly and even downright ugly. Does it clarify an idea or a principle or a fact? It certainly requires some effort to disentangle, and it certainly mirrors the stalemate between Cubans and Americans. But after reading it one is only able ...”

“... however unresponsive and unappetising – are what George Eliot called equivalent centres of self: as real to themselves as we are to ourselves. Lucy Ellmann has written a slim but stylish first novel. The matter of Sweet Desserts is easily summarised, though summary destroys the odd angling of the narrative. This is a daughter’s novel, but told ...”

“... something they might possess concretely enough to justify a sense of loss. In an Anglocentric, self-contained Britain, that massive project begun over four hundred years ago, to be English, and to speak English, was always meant to be unremarkable and quotidian, part of a commitment to sameness, not difference. In such a context, the central unspoken ...”

“... the cause could have encouraged him to make a confession of failure out of a piece of wry, modest self-deprecation. The trouble is, Millais’s judgment, in whatever spirit it was made, has been that of posterity. Peter Funnell’s essay in the catalogue of the exhibition now at the National Portrait Gallery quotes Arthur Symons, writing in 1896, a few months ...”

“... At Tokoza, also on the East Rand, most of the family were present at a Friday-night vigil when a self-styled prophet put it to a group of the relatives that the deceased, Buti Choechoe, was not really dead and that he could be revived. The family split into two factions. Those of little faith questioned the credentials of the ‘prophet’ and distanced ...”

“... Imports declined dramatically, however, as the Victorian epoch entered its most confident and self-regarding phase. Keeping foreign (i.e. French) novels out became the watchword. Moretti’s marked distaste for England derives from its cultural insularity (sustained in our own time by F.R. Leavis’s ludicrous prejudice against ‘foreign’ novels) and ...”

“... sale of his papers. Singer’s American career developed slowly, and involved a whole series of self-inventions and pseudonyms. In 1925, in Warsaw, he had renamed himself ‘Yitskok Bashevis’, taking his mother’s name and thereby distancing himself from his father and brother. In New York, working as a journalist, he signed his articles and essays ...”

“... husk of him who sang will soon/be powdered glass underfoot.’ Here, as Galassi observes, the self-identification is even more explicit. The cicada for Montale has something of that Yeatsian place ‘where all the ladders stop and start’, as the key-word foce (‘estuary’, ‘outlet’) in the last stanza of the sistrum poem suggests. There ...”

“... progenitor of electromagnetic field theory and statistical thermodynamics, but a man of self-mocking humour, whose obiter dicta would well fill thirty minutes’ chat. In vain: a physicist and eminent populariser of science told the producer that whereas a genius such as Michael Faraday would have been awarded three different Nobel Prizes had they ...”

“... meaning in boxing. If their chosen hero prevails, they can nail their colours to his mast; if he self-destructs, an instrument is created with which to chart the demise of the American dream. The boxing world’s association with organised crime, drugs and race inspires dark feelings and is an element of the harsh romance that white writers pursue with black ...”

“... of roles. Athenian performances may have been ubiquitous and dynamic, but they were also very self-consciously performances; Athenians never seem to have confused playing at something with ‘the real thing’. This does not necessarily mean we have to invoke some pre-modern instability of identity, it may simply be that as cultural actors Athenians were ...”

“... with the Treasury, but the super-caution that Blair’s Government practises is merely self-defeating. The Treasury’s historical record gives it no claim to a special wisdom. The Government is also mistaken in its view of Middle England. People’s attitudes to taxation – assuming they even know how much they pay – are more complicated than ...”

“... His lectures were packed, and audiences were impressed with his sincerity and spirit of self-sacrifice. He had decided to dedicate his life to converting Africans to Christianity, he said and to abolishing the slave trade. He described central Africa in glowing terms. There were minerals awaiting exploitation, he said, land suitable for growing ...”

“... found in it clear evidence that the rural Irish were still unfit for the responsibilities of self-government, a possibility then under active consideration. Bridget Cleary’s husband, her father, aunt and four cousins were all charged in connection with her death. Cleary pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received a 20-year sentence; the various members ...”