“... can hope to bring out many of the central features of English law and society: the importance of self-policing, the absence of weapons, confidence in the law, the uniqueness and value of juries. A final difficulty related to this comparative one lies in the acceptance of an unexamined Whig model of history which Professor Beattie has tried to apply to the ...”

“... into new poetic territory from this enthusiastically written book. Perkins is at times forced into self-parody: ‘Except for her poetry and madness, Anne Sexton (1928-74), née Harvey, lived as a suburban housewife.’ But he does his best to enliven things with biographical vignettes. The revelation that John Ashbery was a radio Quiz Kid at the age of 14 ...”

“... obscure impulse remains of historical significance. It may not matter much whether there were real self-confessed Ranters and Ranter Meetings or not. But it seems improbable that the Ranters were invented simultaneously by Fox, Bunyan, Baxter, Muggleton, Reeve and scores of others only to advance their own sectarian disciplinary purposes; nor in order to ...”

“... for good. ‘The promotion I earned that summer, from axeman to rodman, had done more for my self-esteem than any number of inherited titles.’ The matter of inherited titles is an important one in George Ignatieff’s book, as is the family tradition of public service which got the Ignatieffs their estates and their title. His ...”

“... Arctic Dreams has flaws. It is too long and becomes repetitious; in places, its lyricism is self-conscious and strained, its orphic mysticism opaque and portentous. At times it verges on sentimentality. And it is irritating to have a book so rich in allusion to the work of explorers, scientists, historians, artists and writers with virtually no ...”

“... has admitted), and that therefore Israel’s attack on Egypt couldn’t be justified as an act of self-defence. But he will not condemn it as an act of aggression, because anything that makes Israel stronger is a good thing. The important point, as the reader is constantly reminded, is that the fortifications should be extended to make life easier for the ...”

“... in the garden, plenty of sleep and a calm daily routine, all help to restore Hirshl to his former self. But it is Dr Langsam’s daily talks, in which the old neurologist recalls in loving detail the small-town Jewish life of his own youth, which act most deeply to heal Hirshl’s mind: ‘And though the doctor’s voice was that of an old man, Hirshl was as ...”

“... to collide with the inflammable main story, discreetly averting her gaze while the whole thing self-destructs. As if she hadn’t done enough already, talkshow host Jack Python choppers down to ravish the divine Jade from the very brink of nuptiality while her husband-to-have-been, the gutless Lord Mark Rand, gnashes his titled English gums ...”

“... member, H.C. Watson, that the Society’s future lay. He joined in 1840, and lived frugally as a self-supporting scholar on a small private income, devoting his life to the taxonomy and distribution of British plants. His Topographical Botany was the precursor of the Atlas, and set standards which others – Druce, for example – did not always meet. The ...”

“... era of abstractionism for being figurative, he was also denounced for being morbid, macabre and self-indulgent. He responded with wit, made a mockery of criticism, and kept on painting, drinking, gambling, and making love to working-class boys. His favourite images were of men screaming, naked male bodies interlocked in throes that looked more like agony ...”

“... dispel the idea of diabolic possession. Such is the extraordinary mixture of sincerity and self-deception in his protagonist that he is shown as being doubtfully sane, and possibly schizophrenic. His trial in the summer of 1803 (for forging bills of exchange and defrauding the Post Office, both capital offences at that time) was a cause ...”

“... that correspond to the signals received through the senses – and, I would add, that lead to self-consistency in the signal-processing that occurs in the network. The principal evidence here seems to be that the maturing of individuals is accompanied by the regression of the number of synapses. It appears that the genes allow an exuberance in the number ...”

“... for weeks on end. And Benji’s father, it eventually transpires, is a violent drunk. There’s no self-pity in the way Benji tells it. His dominant feeling, when his father is on a bender, is embarrassment. He shuts the windows and hopes the neighbours won’t hear: time to put up the barricades. Benji and Reggie have an older sister. ‘I haven’t talked ...”

“... defences of his work so they could pass them off as their own. And he could appear remarkably self-important: in a lecture on Tocqueville, he noted how impressive it was that in some of his views on the paradoxes of freedom and equality, ‘Tocqueville anticipated me.’ These quirky and revealing writings show that Popper was not as consistent as he ...”

“... Defoe – on whom Carter wrote – and Swift, both of whom excelled at similarly dense and self-reflexive images. According to Clapp, Carter liked to tell the story of her mother’s attempt to stop her from reading novels as a teenager: ‘She told me to remember what had happened to Madame Bovary.’ It is probably, as Clapp suggests, ‘too good to ...”