“... 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 ...”

“... through a gap in the curtains.’ There is too much on show in Three Dollars, too many details self-consciously disclosed. And in The Reasons I Won’t Be Coming, important scenes are frequently written in awkward, clotted prose. ‘We were at each other’s throats,’ says a young Jewish woman in one of the stories, an assistant working in a Moscow ...”

“... culture intersect and his study shows the possibility of escape from the enclosed and self-conscious boundaries of strict ethnicity – it might even make Reginald Byron cheer up a bit. Wall is more concerned with what a writer chooses as subject-matter than with where he or she is from. He discusses the work of writers from a great variety of ...”

“... or in the ignominy of their difference’. The telling assimilation of class to species, or of a self-made man to a counterfeit coin, opens a window onto the unabashedly hierarchical worldview of feudal society at prayer. No less important than class was the great divide between clergy and laity, with monks and nuns (the ‘spiritual people’) enjoying the ...”

“... family tree which traced his descent back to Odin. But what he now regarded as the ultimate act of self-sacrifice, his contribution to the coming of God’s kingdom on earth, everyone else saw as the just punishment of a ...”

“... cultural stereotype’: that of the pious female martyr, the embodiment of feminine self-sacrifice. The most powerful example in Britain was Edith Cavell, whose execution by the German authorities in 1915 for running a refugee smuggling network out of her nurses’ training school was useful propaganda for the Allies. British newspapers, which ...”

“... an account of Herbert Hart’s life that reflects her desire to see the mask of respectability and self-possession torn off, so that people will know what she had to cope with. Hart seems to have used the diaries partly as a substitute for intimacy, but perhaps he left them for Jenifer on purpose. These days, unfortunately, a biographer presented with such ...”

“... for Japan simultaneously because the Japanese language doesn’t set up a strict boundary between Self and Other – a claim that doesn’t impress the hard-nosed Tsutsui.) Tsutsui gives this kind of stuff ample space, but – being both a fan and an academic writing for a mass audience – he’s terrified of sounding too serious. In a doomed effort to make ...”

“... by social justice. The virtuous circle is one in which long-term economic and political gains are self-sustaining, because confidence on both fronts becomes mutually reinforcing. The problem all along was how to get there from here, when here meant that Labour was so distrusted that it would never be allowed the economic latitude to fulfil its political ...”

“... strictly necessary to leading a modest existence. His first wife, Lucretia, was such a miracle of self-abnegation and anxious piety that had she not died from consumption she would surely have perished from excessive virtue. William was saved from this life of hair-shirtedness by Emily, his more worldly and practical second wife (and Eleanor’s ...”

“... through the glass ceiling ‘by sheer character and initiative’, that rarity for her age, a self-made woman. She was a mature 26 when she agreed to marry Henry, over 30 when the marriage was consummated, well beyond the normal age of first wedlock for aristocratic women. Her mind, her religion, her tastes, are all subjects with some depth to them, and ...”

“... and paradoxes run rampant as she describes the convoluted nature of her tale: ‘deception and self-deception . . . blurring of truth and reality . . . secrets and lies. Yet it also contains generosity, goodwill, absurdity, laughter, tenderness and a good measure of love.’ At which point, overloaded by the blinding chiaroscuro of it all, I think: dear ...”

“... in the following lines from ‘No hay olvido’, and they are not locked in a room of the self. On the contrary, there is a great deal of tenderness towards others, and if the phrase about wanting to forget clearly glances at the poem’s title and implies a stark impossibility, the very form of the sentence reminds us discreetly that the thing can ...”

“... to be convinced that he had a heart after all. Maybe Blair will end his term with a similarly self-serving expression of ...”

“... hounds and loyal mediocrities, with the latter preponderating over time. Compared to this, the self-conscious embrace of elitist methods of selection looks positively attractive, especially if ways could be found to inject some political responsiveness into the selection process. Consider the way the Germans handle an analogous problem. Their ...”