“... of us, however indifferent or hostile, must sit up and take notice. Inept, bungled and irrational self-sacrifice can be seductive and inspirational, especially in the cynical public world which Leopardi describes. These extremes call to each other. One man who certainly took notice was the hero of Keates’s book, Daniele Manin, who four years later would ...”

“... and ‘lesbo-Victorian’ are all terms Waters herself has used in self-description – though generally not all of them at once – and they are both accurate enough and unfair. The books are indeed pastiches: Victoriana as a queer theorist might perform it, with costumes by Judith Butler, prisons and madhouses by ...”

“... how he ‘picked his way through the profusion of texts’ provided by Biondo. The answer is self-evident. He read the section devoted to triumphs, which are conveniently examined in chronological order; noting Biondo’s remark that they became increasingly elaborate from the time of Caesar onwards, he concerned himself only with Caesar’s triumphs and ...”

“... of the Constitution more compatible with their own ideals, their decisions are not arbitrary or self-seeking in the narrow sense of procuring personal advancement. They do not decide so as to favour some group of political supporters or allies or cronies. Nor are they political in the narrow sense of partisan. In this respect, Justices are different from ...”

“... that any notion of rational planning will give way to panic. Ideology will at once take over from self-interest. Above all, it will be manifest that the only one of the two great powers likely to come out of the contest as ‘Victor’ must be the one which hurls its ballistic weapons first, furthest and fastest – and preferably before the weapons of the ...”

“... into passionate and tender women in three hours – has scored another triumph.’ The self-congratulatory note is perhaps – given what we know – merely pathetic, but there is, too, a distinct, if perverted echo of 19th-century sentimentality to be caught here: the remark is irresistibly reminiscent of Nekrasov’s poem on the redemption of a ...”

“... and the two went up and out into the crowded circus of the world. Alienated beyond recall. Self-exiled ever since the day when, as Dedalus, he saw that long-legged, bare-thighed image of innocence standing among the mirroring pools on Dolly-mount Strand, his idealised image of Nora Barnacle from Galway, an elemental, untutored, unspoiled, ignorant ...”

“... dissatisfied with the effect, judging by her zeal to dress up some of the original reviews with self-conscious little prefaces, and so to convert them into the more cumbrous literary pieces of her new manner. In practice, her ‘three-quarter face’ portraits seem just a series of interviews with celebrities of the film world like Buñuel, Godard, Jeanne ...”

“... for contemplation or application, he would have nothing to think or talk about. Its thereness, its self-identity from one moment to the next, allows it to be contemplated, Thus, while meaning is a principle of stability in an interpretation, significance embraces a principle of change. There is of course a lot more to Hirsch, but here I need only add that his ...”

“... the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird is a fanciful and perhaps in the long run self-interested reason for behaving decently to birds, but it is highly germane to Mr Turner’s subject. It may even be an intuitive shot at a theory of evolution. And it must in practice be more conducive to ‘kindness’ than the Christian myth that non-human ...”

“... two familiar and false generalisations on the head. Honor Lady Lisle – downright, businesslike, self-centred and sensible – would have been astonished to hear that 16th-century women lived a life of helpless slavery, and the loving relations between herself and her much older husband hammer yet another nail in the coffin housing the strange thesis that ...”

“... to Merer, grain from two regions in the Nile Delta. Yet the extent and unity of Egypt was far from self-evident in this period. One of the traditional titles of the Egyptian king was ‘the uniter of two lands’, an acknowledgment that from its earliest history Egypt was comprised of two distinct centres of power: Memphis, at the base of the Nile Delta, and ...”

“... in helping to reshape Western views of antiquity. The unsympathetic reader might consider the work self-indulgent: its seven hundred pages cover Brown’s career and literary production only as far as 1987, while 38 years of elder-statesman life and major books have followed since. The case for the defence is that Brown has never written a dull or inelegant ...”

“... on her book; it would be better if it were less critical of ‘non-profits’ and more self-reflective about the academy and its disciplining work. Admittedly, nothing is harder than clearing your mind of the frameworks and paradigms of the moment, but it is crucial to try. We want to address issues relevant to our time, of course, but to what ...”

“... war’. Research into soldier-civilian relations has redrawn the image of the gallant GI, self-disciplined, chivalrous and sexually well-behaved. Sexual interactions were usually consensual: women were attracted to the well-mannered, well-dressed GIs, who brought with them new dance steps and novel ways of being courteous. But many women became ...”