“... know her employment status: did she have a National Insurance number? Did she have proof she was self-employed, a student or on benefits? ‘I never claimed benefits: how can you ask me for benefits? I never claimed for benefits. I work! Can’t you see I’m working!’ She had to bring a letter with proof of her status to the police station within two ...”

“... had received serious head injuries, and about twenty had lost an eye. Then there’s the matter of self-inflicted harm: the pig-headedness of railing against a lower speed limit, which figures suggest is already responsible for a drop in road deaths; the destruction of speed cameras; the demonisation of Macron; the flurries of fake news and wild theories from ...”

“... Wall Street lawyers for universal peace in the same years, in a ne plus ultra of empty American self-satisfaction.But Ghervas’s account of the League is disabling in her own terms. She fails to register how Eurocentric her picture becomes as a result of her decision to ignore Latin American opposition to the imperial presumption of the design of the ...”

“... Bill refers to a fellow subaltern as Crumpets I can hear his boarding school accent and catch his self-possession. He speaks both French and German well enough to make himself understood to the natives and captured invaders, and has about him a lightly worn, unselfconscious patriotism and pride in his regiment. He is also modestly knowledgeable about French ...”

“... marriage, young motherhood, and a Doll’s House bolt; soaring ambition accompanied by wracking self-doubt; an arduous climb to the top that left her competitors littered on the slopes; mortal illness, and near miraculous recovery; heroism, heartache, more heroism and more heartache, all of it against a revolving backdrop of political turmoil and cultural ...”

“... Czechoslovakia. In the end, Volonte’s feral energy worked in perfect counterpoint to Delon’s self-restraint, while Montand gave one of his finest performances as an alcoholic who overcomes his demons for the sake of the heist – arguably the most brilliantly choreographed robbery in film history. Something of the tenderness in Bob le flambeur ...”

“... get their kit off, are not glamorised at all, with the English actor fearless in the degree of his self-exposure. God’s Own Country stays in the mind as Call Me by Your Name doesn’t, with the scenes where the Romanian takes off and abandons the farmer heartrending as the idyllic French film never is quite. In the days when I might have written a television ...”

“... is mortal to songs like ‘Das Rosenband’ and ‘Heidenröslein’.The question​ of self-awareness is of central interest to Christian Gerhaher, one of the most accomplished singers of the present time and one of the most thoughtful. In Lyrical Diary, he ruminates on his experience as a lieder singer, with special reference to the works of ...”

“... or “liberty” or “humanity” or “the free world” but an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?’ Merely raising the question led to Sontag being denounced as an apologist for terrorism.‘Terrorism’: the word acquired the magical power of stopping all ...”

“... was said to ‘revel in the status his sentence gives him’. A senior psychologist found him ‘self-justifying, superficial and self-centred’; the ‘only constructive suggestion’ he could make was that McCluskie be allowed to go on a painting and decorating course. The officer who concluded, ‘A very poor prospect ...”

“... on about 15 acres of land. He kept sheep, pigs and cattle and tended a two-acre orchard. He was self-sufficient. He got the family out without mishap. On their arrival in Belgrade, they registered as refugees and were eventually transferred to Kosovo. There were other options – they were even asked if they wanted to settle outside the former Yugoslavia ...”

“... supportive, Yiddish and English-speaking parents, growing up in a tough but precariously self-respecting community which would later become a black ghetto, Podhoretz was the star pupil in the local high school, where white students felt threatened by gangs of teenaged blacks. In his 1963 essay ‘My Negro Problem – and Ours’, this early ...”

“... cows originally brought to America by the Spanish colonisers and allowed to run wild. Remarkably self-sufficient, the longhorn cow was not wholly unlike the buffalo it replaced.The Amerindians for their part were replaced by Anglo-Americans and Hispanics, who moved around on horseback, herding the cows together and driving them east to be killed. As ...”

“... of capitalism is obliged to take the very form of the market – novelty, stereotype, flash self-advertisement, cheap repeatable motif – deep into its bones. ‘Baudelaire wanted to create a poncif, a cliché. Lemaître assures him that he has succeeded.’ Finally, then, after what seems like long wandering away from the world of the arcades, we ...”

“... confidence? Who is the man that can sacrifice every principle of public virtue to the most sordid self-interest? Who is the man that, without remorse, can disturb the tranquillity of domestic happiness? Who is the man that, without mercy or common decency, can wound the peace of every honest individual? Who is the man that is false to his friends, inimical to ...”