“... to dangerous traffic by blocking roads. Architecture students, Holly Smith shows, supported ‘self-build’ housing initiatives and squatters. Immigrant communities created festivals and cultural institutions: Elizabeth Buettner sensitively recovers Naseem Khan’s decades of effective and joyful activism. Gay enclaves emerged in London, Manchester and ...”

“... had been reset. Golding was painfully insecure – he never delivered a new novel without some self-flagellating comment on its shortcomings – and much of Monteith’s work with him came down to ego management. When the 1961 Prix des Éditeurs went to ‘Samuel Beckett and some Spanish writer whom I’ve never heard of before called ...”

“... Nothing was said in the advert about acting ability or Mrs Donaldson would not have applied; self-confidence wasn’t mentioned either, which would have been another deterrent as Mrs Donaldson had always thought of herself as shy. It was a point not lost on Gwen to whom she was unwise enough to mention her application. ‘For a start you don’t like ...”

“... despite the evidence of her medical file, how alert and full of good humour and lacking in self-pity. She had bruising from the steroid-induced thinness of her skin and, as she told me, she couldn’t see my face, a few feet away. She had her legs up on the sofa (on top of everything else, she has a collapsing spine) and when she moved it was with the ...”

“... they feed on themselves. Conspiracies, corruption. We are all too easily swallowed into a self-sustaining, multivoiced protest entity, a sack of squabbling cats certain of one thing: defeat. To get back to the river I had to follow one of the less celebrated streams, the Northern Outfall Sewer, now rebranded as the Olympic Park Greenway. It seemed ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”