“... Bower has missed it, or Branson is that shallow: a rich man who is of no interest at all. That the self-aggrandising prankster who races to court at every opportunity and continually complains of being done down is lacking substance isn’t news, but still it’s disappointing to find that there is nothing more to him than one thought. It’s evident that ...”

“... sharpest critics of integration to being among its most consistent advocates. Though inevitably self-serving at times, Lafontaine’s account of the building of the Red-Green coalition in Germany, of the problems that arose both inside his party and inside the government, and of his later resignation, offers a fascinating insight into the current ...”

“... versions of Newton’s divine dinner, poured from the London presses into the coffee houses. Self-made experts announced that the Principia had tamed comets and tides, planets and pendulums by celestial law and geometrical order. However surprising it may seem, even the English title, ‘The Mathematical Principles of Natural ...”

“... science) that flows, in Toulmin’s view, from its disciplinary narrowness, its arrogance and its self-referential hyper-professionalism. It’s a position Toulmin came to quite naturally. Having trained in physics, and worked on radar in the RAF during the Second World War, he went up to Cambridge in 1946 to read philosophy. Richard Braithwaite was his ...”

“... to contribute to the wealth and stability of its neighbours. The scale of investment and level of self-interest seemed to suggest that the West was serious about the political and economic development of Afghanistan. In March, the United Nations Special Representative, Lakdhar Brahimi, outlined a plan for ‘a broad-based multi-ethnic government respectful of ...”

“... as Kissinger put it, they hadn’t grasped ‘the notion of starting an unwinnable war to restore self-respect’. With poor or no evaluation, much of the work of Soviet spies was wasted: when Philby told the NKVD during the Second World War that Britain had ceased to spy on its Soviet ally, Stalin simply assumed that Philby was a triple agent. The more ...”

“... ambivalent about the past. The world before the war was her childhood, it remained sealed off, a self-contained idyll whose certainties gave her what all romantics need, a permanent sense of loss. For her the ancien régime never quite lost its glamour; she dearly loved a lord and her literary heroes were the Great Victorians. The power of the past, as ...”

“... On closer enquiry he improves. Shrewd judgment and even humility coexisted alongside a habit of self-justification and a mania for work. ‘No time today!’ Sir Gilbert would cry as he swept out of his office to the next appointment, brushing assistants aside. There cannot have been much intimacy for the boy. Though he grew up in awe of his father, he came ...”

“... selection gave us two conflicting tendencies. The first is the product of ‘selfish genes’: our self-aggrandising desire to reproduce at the expense of others. In modern society, this translates into avarice, wrath, lust, gluttony and the other deadly sins. The second tendency is for societies to erect moral codes, which often frown on behaviour encoded by ...”

“... chorus of celebrants here isn’t background – the passengers are strangers, not part of their self-defining past – and they aren’t scenery. They are a necessary part of the romantic comedy, a backdrop that does more than concentrate the attention: they help legitimise what’s going on downstage. Elsewhere, scenery threatens to intrude; but when it ...”

“... Britain gave his brother eastern Palestine and called it the Emirate of Transjordan. Cox’s self-deception was perhaps deeper than that of his faithful handmaid, Miss Bell. Even by 1927, he did not understand why the Iraqis had rejected British rule. Writing that it was ‘extraordinary’, he added: ‘The mere terms “mandatory” and ...”

“... to the camp. I went to one of the leaders and spent three days with him. He spoke to me about self-martyrdom and faith and my duty. On the third day after morning prayer I went in a car back to Halabja again and went to the same house and I slept until lunchtime and then prayed and ate and then waited until after afternoon prayers and then put on my ...”

“... is representative of the confused tone of the whole, being at once contradictory, camp, Pooterish, self-pitying and vindictive. After reading its melodramatic final sentence – ‘To those who will argue that many things would have been better left unsaid, I can only comment that after a lifetime of enforced silence, there is no choice other than to tell the ...”

“... The dramatic story of the rise and fall of the self-proclaimed messiah Sabbatai Sevi has usually been presented as a weird anomaly in Jewish history, with no redeeming merit as a lesson. However, as more and more becomes known about it, the case becomes of greater, and more general interest. Sabbatai Sevi was born in 1626, the son of a Jewish assistant to the Dutch, English and French merchants then living in Smyrna (now Izmir ...”

“... it evidence of a ravenous and indiscriminate Indian appetite for European goods. Indians remained self-sufficient in terms of food and housing all through the colonial period. They did replace many of their tools and weapons with European manufactures, but sometimes this served only to increase their own manufactures. The acquisition of awls, needles and ...”