“... and Henslowe’s Diary are not the most immediately engaging of works, and they usually induce a self-indulgent dullness in the scholars who discuss them: but such texts come to life in Hattaway’s hands. He has formidable gifts as an expositor. Particularly impressive is the long first section of the book, devoted to stages, audiences, gestures and ...”

“... there were three friendly, dapper young policemen standing at my door, all trained in the art of self-defence, all equipped with life-preservers. One asked me my name, calling me ‘sir’. When I told him, he called me ‘Norman’. Policemen always use one’s forename, once they have found it out. ‘Well, Norman,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid I’ve got to ...”

“... The dramatist’s purpose in devising ‘exploitable gaps’ in the comedies is always, he muses, self-evident. ‘But what is the result when the identical formula is applied in situations that involve life and death?’ Unfortunately, this query proves to be merely rhetorical. Evans never really answers it, except indirectly in the form of the particular ...”

“... they have thought otherwise? From these pages there rises a weird yearning. Davie, in his modern self-exile, joins in his imagination those who lived in America but were Englishmen, ‘Englishmen who happened to live overseas’. To live in America then was to be – as it now can never be – not an English expatriate but an Englishman’s ...”

“... and Goethe, they were unable to shake off their religious concern. In Clough’s case, the sheer self-destructiveness of the sceptical process and the guilt which haunted him over his sexual impulses revived his religious questionings. In the end, his overtaxed spirit sought safety in the sterile conformity of marriage, humdrum work for others, and a God ...”

“... women shun them as rivals. Marilyn Monroe’s tragic end is a classic case of beauty turning into self-entrapment. Beauty is a wasting asset at best: and if traded on the marriage market can only realise its full value in a single transaction – of which there may be long leisure to repent. Until recently, male beauty has been a much more exploitable ...”

“... of the spotlight dazzles our gaze. The thing we contemplate is not Edmund Kean, his very self and voice, but the Kean of William Hazlitt. The radiance of the report obscures that which is reported. Ms Kelly writes clearly for the most part, seldom with elegance. She gets into some frightful muddles of syntax: ‘Family commitments, among them to her ...”

“... of middle age: for many, the role of rioter may prove to be a brief toying with a dangerous self. In the past such toying would end with courtship, pairing and a departure from the gregarious milling of the streets. Its end would be hastened by a movement into the adult world and a leaving behind of childish things. It would be made particularly ...”

“... than anyone else, and neither can he have relished public debate on the messy business of possible self-interest in priests. Yet, as he says, it is no very comfortable matter for an Irish Protestant to criticise any instance of priestly greed, even if it should exist, when the countryside has so many half-empty rectories, deaneries and episcopal ...”

“... you are not open with other people, you are not open with yourself.’ He views his infant self from afar, with twee delight, but somehow without curiosity. What mattered deeply to him and what mattered scarcely at all are presented in a richly jewelled jumble, so indulgently detailed as to give the reader visual indigestion. The smooth, elegant style ...”

“... given by real-life liars or dupes. The ‘coming clean’ is perhaps represented by Fowles’s self-confident expressions of his own opinions: indeed, he ends the novel with an epilogue, making his position clear on the religious and political issues which his story illustrates. He writes to the duke that he suspects that the actor, Lacy, is trying to tell ...”

“... was bound to have. Eleven days after meeting his deadline on Indochina, PMF announced a scheme for self-government in Tunisia which brought another bitter colonial war to an end. To the fury of the colonial lobby, the decision and the speed with which it was made were wondrously popular in France. Even Le Canard Enchainé admitted, with embarrassment, that ...”

“... The chapter on Edith Sitwell is wonderfully funny. A luncheon at her club when this tremendously self-important poetess, temporarily disconcerted by a bluebottle caught in the Venetian blinds, affected a swoon until the insect was dispatched is worthy of Lytton Strachey; as is the ceremony of her being received into the Catholic Church. A long telegram ...”

“... were no more ready to abandon vortex models, which continued to proliferate in glorious and self-defeating complexity. It is valuable for a scientist to learn, from studies such as this collection, how hard a struggle a radically new idea has to endure before it triumphs. Max Planck expressed it in a celebrated sentence: ‘A new scientific truth does ...”

“... point), it cannot cope with that concomitant of certain forms of life – mind. In particular my self-awareness, which I am prepared to allow is shared by other humans and possibly some animals, is a property lying entirely outside the scheme of physical science. The basic assumption of science is that there are certain facts of common observation on which ...”