“... the most ardent exponents of the devotio moderna – but privileged observers. Mary’s measured self-possession is astonishing. She raises her right hand, to silence the archangel (and us), and prepares to turn back to her book. There is nothing quite like it in Renaissance Italian art.Because of the gaps in the documentation, art historians have tended to ...”

“... of this, while if there are ultras who see any form of close engagement with literary texts as self-evidently a part of capitalism’s smokescreen, they aren’t likely to be persuaded otherwise by being made to read a few admiring paragraphs about the author of Practical Criticism. It is quite true that Richards’s ‘experiments in applied ...”

“... descriptions of the stable, fixed person appears to call into question the existence of a self, understood non-relationally.’ Family history, biology, social context – all these things, important in traditional approaches, dwindle almost to nothing in travel psychology. Desire remains the motivator, but ‘Where to?’ replaces the question of ...”

“... same cannot be said about the book accompanying the film, which is aggressively sumptuous and self-satisfied: large, beautiful and as inappropriate as a 5.4-pound souvenir added to an infantryman’s pack.)* We are in the sky, as the jungle is painted with napalm; in Washington DC, studying maps with optimistic generals; at home waiting, when American day ...”

“... and agency), but the tense sociology of difference: yeomen, gentlemen farmers, intellectuals and self-made businessmen vie to win the hand, or control the fate of Hardy’s female protagonists. These novels anxiously aspire to a world in which such difference might melt away, a place often glimpsed only beyond the limits of the plot. While the men are ...”

“... Démocratique (MoDem). Bayrou decided last month to jettison his candidature in an ‘act of self-denial’ to boost the chances of a centrist presidency: Macron’s. Bayrou is a stolid figure with a stolid following: in Houellebecq’s novel Soumission Bayrou is the perfect choice after the Islamist candidate wins the French presidency in 2022 and casts ...”

“... his own prize specimen. Mr Common Decency, it seemed, was capable of a level of performative self-neglect worthy of New York’s erstwhile Dada punk-queen, the Baroness Else von Freytag-Loringhoven. In the final pages of his book, Sutherland returns to ‘How the Poor Die’, and to the stink of ‘natural’ death. Is that what Orwell, in his last ...”

“... to a show of Agnes’s that uses her own blood as a medium. He’s alarmed by the undertone of self-harm, but wouldn’t an engineer father have a question about the how as well as the why? How, as a matter of technique, has Agnes fixed the blood in her indictment of the relentless petty cruelty of life so that it stays bright red on the walls? The ...”

“... That I’m blaspheming against a particular penis? I don’t think any mullah anywhere is going to self-identify to such an extent. And what you don’t know is that more than a few religious-minded scholars buy these paintings.’ When I asked if he’d ever had any formal training his explanation was not out of kilter with the rest of his life. ‘When I was ...”

“... left her well provided for. To be sure, Krupskaya tended to dislike important and, in particular, self-important men, putting Shaw in a distinguished company that included Stalin and Trotsky. But rudeness, or at any rate grumpiness, was her forte, and it stood her in good stead in her career as an Oppositionist after Lenin’s death. She mocked Trotsky (also ...”

“... it’s not easy to write well about rich Jews.)The first generation of Rothschild brothers were self-made men, admired for their financial brilliance and scorned for their lack of European culture. During the upheavals of the Napoleonic era, they settled in Frankfurt, London, Paris, Naples and Vienna. Salomon (1774-1855), founder of the Austrian branch, had ...”

“... the World!’Ghost hunting was a money-spinner between the wars, especially for the popular press. Self-styled investigators, often journalists, went on assignments to haunted houses, toting microphones and cameras, and other paraphernalia. Like other sensational stunts paid for by the papers, the stories were aimed largely at the rapidly expanding readership ...”

“... This was a reference to the Canadian TV show Slings & Arrows, where a white charlatan with the self-bestowed name Sanjay convinces the director of a Shakespeare festival that if he courts a younger generation with an incredibly offensive, nihilistic ad campaign – billboards reading F*CK YOU, showing current elderly patrons of the festival on life support ...”

“... towards knowledge is all the more uncertain when the knowledge pursued is knowledge of the self. But the little tricks our minds play on us have proved to be fine doors into the way our minds work. Why, asked the 19th-century German physician Hermann von Helmholtz, do we see coloured patterns when we press on our closed eyes? Why do amputees still feel ...”

“... England especially, had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with loyalty: the self-sacrificing loyalty expected by a man from a true woman. Flora is supposed to have said that she would have tried to rescue anybody she found in such distress, not just a rebel prince. It was a remark that thrilled her sympathisers, Jacobites or ...”