“... a therapy that suited his conception of the doctor’s role – to augment the patient’s natural self-healing. Indians, he declared, responded particularly well simply because they were closer to nature than Europeans. But his influence began to decline. The obvious reason was the rise of chemical anaesthetics; Winter implies that racial anxieties also ...”

“... who reported this rule having his leg pulled? Those rich thrusters of the Grande Epoque, the self-made men destined to become the new ruling class, come in for expert dissection in The Rise of the Nouveaux Riches by Mordaunt Crook, who is primarily concerned with their architectural tastes. Here we meet not only the men whose millions came from ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... exhibited cards with coloured symbols on them, surrounded by interpretative texts based on his own self-made hermeneutic system, creating a symbolic iconography, an ever-expanding text. In many of the documentary films and videos there was a similar tendency, with emphasis on the gap between what happened and what is recorded – the contradictory and ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... another moment, his last in fact, the dying man is hopeful, as he calls out to a former artistic self who is also, always, a future one in the making: ‘that Youth who could do ...”

“... face fell. He’d wanted the Nobel Peace Prize.’ He ran the Government in a wholly self-indulgent manner, and had little idea about peacetime problems, saying, for example, of his time as Chancellor under Baldwin: ‘I was Chancellor of the Exchequer . . . for five years and . . . I never understood it.’ Not long before leaving office he ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... feed or cling or even manage its own temperature control. Most of its repertoire, instead, is self-advertisement. That is where, according to Hrdy, infant fat comes in. The baby is saying, not just ‘love me’ but ‘keep me.’ Unlike any other primate, it is born with a dimpled roundness which proclaims: ‘I am a healthy baby, a big, bonny baby ...”

“... us that in his early years Fuller wrote a ‘very attractive’ book on Aleister Crowley, the self-styled Beast 666. Visiting politicians include the Liberal Lord Beauchamp, whom Fothergill to his dismay overcharges for a consignment of hock. It was Beauchamp who in 1931 suddenly resigned all his offices and went to live abroad, having been threatened ...”

“... Lambert’s Mainly about Lindsay Anderson* that Lindsay harboured similar thoughts about such self-imposed menialities. On the eve of filming O Lucky Man Lindsay has his ailing mother to stay in his flat in Swiss Cottage. Before she arrives he cleans up the kitchen and bathroom and is just tackling the fireplace in his mother’s room when the doorbell ...”

“... 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 ...”