“... around this time, ‘the sex appeal of the inorganic’. In his documentary The Century of the Self (2002), Adam Curtis argues that advertising co-opted psychoanalysis, and the same could be said of Surrealism – that advertising exploited its art of subliminal suggestion for the purposes of commercial persuasion. For Danchev this is no bad thing. He ...”

“... Place, and revenge our Quarrels upon him. A very ordinary Microscope shows us, that a Louse is it self a very lousy Creature. At times we are almost into Johnsonian thinking: ‘A Man who confines his Speculations to the Time present, has but a very narrow Province to employ his Thoughts in’ (# 152). It is well-known that the Tatler started off with some ...”

“... gritty but is not instantly intelligible, encompasses the kind of anarchist, anti-authoritarian, self-help, do-it-yourself, William Morrissy, anti-urban, individualistichomemaking that Peter Hall greatly admires. In its original Baltimore setting, it meant virtually giving away run-down and semi-derelict housing to anyone who would rehabilitate it by their ...”

“... Germans accepted as genuine because they thought they controlled them: ‘the German talent for self-deception’ was gradually enlarged into a genius for perceiving truth in fiction. This isn’t to say that the British were naturally better at this complex game than the Germans. These volumes, notably this one, show that the scales of success and failure ...”

“... commitment to Labour politics in the Sixties: intellectuals, he said, must avoid the sort of self-exile to which they had relegated themselves under the last Labour government. During the Fifties, Williams devoted himself essentially to works of literary criticism. Despite the claims made for Williams as a ‘socialist theorist of culture’, most of ...”

“... the SACP.’ Faced, however, with ubiquitous evidence that the ANC is bringing to power a rapidly self-enriching black bourgeoisie, many within the Party have begun to doubt the realism of attempting to build socialism via the ANC, but the leadership warns against ‘a narrow, SACP “go it alone” attitude; or, loose, generalising and demoralised ...”

“... Onetti’s novels, so that he seems, in casual conversation, to be talking like his most literary self. Perhaps this is how Onetti talks, but the uneven texture of Chao’s book suggests otherwise: that the speaking Onetti and the writing Onetti are quite different. Still, it’s a good performance, however stage-managed. We meet a man who has read ...”

“... that comparative advantage lay. In his classical scheme of things, if everyone pursues his or her self-interest, we end up with the best possible outcome. For those not blessed with that simple faith, what was rational for the individual was not necessarily rational or best for the country. Britain suffered from too much reliance on laissez-faire. The second ...”

“... in a past kept deliberately indeterminate. It now turned on persecution, guilt, betrayal and self-betrayal, and on innocence too: the innocence of the children, and of a girl Kobus had briefly hankered after and then turned his back on, in desperate circumstances, during his adolescence. By this time the story had revealed itself to be, at a ...”

“... theory of cock-up to that of conspiracy, an announcement normally accompanied by a happy smile of self-assurance suggesting that they have just invented this old cliché.) Suffice it to say that Foot does dreadful and detailed damage here to the reputations of a number of leading hacks and that they deserve all they get. It is, however, worth pointing out ...”

“... in general, Bayly argues, British imperial rule became in this period far more authoritarian and self-conscious, just as Britain’s rulers took care to increase their practical and ideological control at home. Both in Great Britain and in its colonies, hundreds of new Army barracks were established between the 1790s and 1820. In both cases, there was a new ...”

“... to be a pilot on the Mississippi, are what one might expect from an intelligent, highly literate, self-educated young man, who already knows what will make a good story in the local paper. They are rather sober, a bit like travel journalism, which, indeed, some of them became when his brother Orion published them in his newspaper. One lectures solemnly on the ...”

“... is induction. He is going to argue, he tells us at the beginning, that a style of reasoning is self-authenticating. The idea sounds innocent enough: a proposition can only be assessed as true or false when there is some style of reasoning that sets the questions and provides ways of answering them. We learn that there is no way of settling the truth of a ...”

“... incomprehension and distaste’ for the language of ‘further reformation’ spoken by the self-styled ‘godly’ members of the House of Commons. Puritan radicalism, fortified by the King’s intransigence, proved a much stronger incentive to fight for Parliament than the constitutional issues of 1640-2. Yet that was not, Russell suggests, because ...”

“... of brooding about America and Europe, the past and the future, art and society, influence and self-reliance, was coming to a head in a gush of discussion. The issues raised by the Regionalists, the Mexican muralists, by the question of abstract art, or by Surrealism, were all pointing in the same direction – towards the definition of a truly American ...”