“... is drained of the capacity to love: he is ‘Pericles of Tired’, exhausted, off the pace, self-loathing (‘the sound of his own voice in his ears saying stuff disgusts him’). Like Shakespeare’s prince, Richard has lost his wife and daughter, but he has conversations in his head with the child he last saw thirty years ago. He asks her about ...”

“... as mixed as the methods: the connections range from the inspired to the whimsical. An instance of self-aware pseudomorphism is a gallery curated by the American painter Amy Sillman; titled ‘The Shape of Shape’, it is a mélange of 71 works, some old, some new, by 71 artists, some familiar, some not, that feature mostly abstract forms suggestive of body ...”

“... did help to normalise the psychedelic experience. He was, Jay writes, ‘an adept of spiritual self-discovery, but also a stand-in for a sober general public to whom, until the arrival of mescaline, all mind-altering drugs had been “dope”, of interest only to bohemians, foreigners and criminals’ – the Michael Pollan of his time.*In the aftermath of ...”

“... seized on every opportunity to secure not just better living conditions but more autonomy and self-expression for themselves and (especially) for their children. But he shows too that they wanted to do that, if they could, while preserving neighbourliness and solidarity – while insisting, indeed, that solidarity and aspiration were not antagonistic ...”

“... you see that a very different process is at work, in which the arms lobby on each side has self-interestedly sought capital and bureaucratic advantage while enlisting its counterpart on the other side as a justification for its own ambition. In other words, they enjoy a mutually profitable partnership. In the early 1960s the US navy’s newly ...”

“... consequences such ‘small special points’ might have. As he wrote in the characteristically self-effacing preface, ‘the subject may appear an insignificant one, but we shall see that it possesses some interest; and the maxim de minimis non curat lex [‘the law does not concern itself with trifles’] does not apply to science.’ Nor does it apply to ...”

“... face of pressure from Beijing, several new organisations emerged, led by young people advocating self-determination or outright independence for Hong Kong. These groups launched a campaign aimed at ‘reclaiming’ (guangfu) local places. Young people who’d been involved in the Umbrella Movement began to connect social welfare issues and disputes over ...”

“... herself with nettles, nor beat the front of her body, nor lacerate herself with cuts’. These self-inflicted tortures are like treats to be rationed, and are permissible only with authorisation. The​ Ancrene Wisse is unsettling in a number of ways. The experience of reading it is sensuous. Its rhythmic, alliterative language delights the ear and ...”

“... the rest of the Company’s; or if you have any design to draw us into Expence, you will find your self deceiv’d, for we are not Persons to be led by the Nose into such an Inconveniency.The string of puns here – some helpfully indicated by italics – draws the reader’s attention away from the dignity of the argument. The club’s members are right to be ...”

“... one of the few still alive at the end, is 12-year-old Peter, who the author readily admitted was a self-portrait, not least in his reluctance to be a Hitler Youth. The family home is a large estate, the Georgenhof, once affluent, less so since the war began, its vistas somewhat spoiled by the housing development over the road, where a man called Drygalski, the ...”

“... briefly, somebody we’ve lost. Nikolai thinks the idea is naff – the premise of ‘a mediocre self-help book’ cooked up by a ‘middling delusionist’ who also happens to be his mother. ‘The essence of growing up,’ he explains in the first of their dialogues, ‘is to play hide and seek with one’s mother successfully.’ There’s nothing like ...”

“... What if the Habsburg Empire formed a true community of sentiment, and even became a vehicle for self-determination, just as much as the nation-states that replaced it? That is the provocative argument of Pieter Judson’s history. To accept the idea that only ethnic nations can elicit the devotion of their members, Judson argues, is to buy into a ...”

“... kept him company, so to speak, in his dotage. Wilhelm, the father, himself the only child of self-obsessed parents, is bitter, spiteful, vain, distracted, sardonic when not scathing, and very handsome. Born of a German mother to an itinerant Neapolitan, he is blond in a world where everyone is dark. Arturo reads that blondness, which he doesn’t ...”

“... effects of different policies – school closures, social distancing, shielding of the elderly and self-isolation of symptomatic individuals – and of combinations of them were simulated by adjusting the average number of contacts. The most effective single strategy, shielding the elderly, still resulted in 220,000 deaths and a need for 120,000 ICU beds, as ...”

“... draw attention to it would be to advertise a country’s dependence on external trade links, and self-sufficiency is the ideal promoted by the politicians of the region. There has long been a close relationship between the control of water resources and the exercise of political or economic power. Ancient Mesopotamian agriculture relied on networks of ...”