“... was dead. It was Waugh’s only attempt to take up a public cause, ‘with all the pomposity and self-importance’ required, and it convinced him of ‘the fatuity of politics’ and the ‘wickedness of politicians’, who were prepared to commit any atrocity in the pursuit of power ‘if they think they can get away with it’. With the Thorpe campaign he ...”

“... from the bedroom window. Brushing my teeth this morning, I catch a glimpse of my New Year self and am depressed to see how depleted I’m looking, though not quite as much as Raymond Briggs, who’s pretty much my age, and a good documentary on whom we watched earlier yesterday evening. He’s almost two-dimensional, thinned to a knife ...”

“... anti-communist heroes or cynical mercenaries, instead positing that both anti-communist ideas and self-interest shaped the émigré enterprise’. Certainly it would be hard to find a real anti-communist hero in either group from Tromly’s portrayal. The NTS comes out particularly badly: ‘relentlessly deceptive, associated with fascism and ...”

“... an elective kinship: there’s almost a blurring between your own sensations, and impressions and self, and those of these writers. (Writers, incidentally, get no say in being elected to the inner family: you can imagine the dismay of the great dead at finding themselves so adored, and by such adorers. But publishing is also a relinquishment: you don’t get ...”

“... of leaves and load detailed information about the leaf’s parent tree onto your iPhone. What self-respecting hipster wouldn’t want a mobile app that tells them the gender ratio – computed in real time – at their favourite bar, based on the pictures gathered by cameras installed at the bar’s entrance and exit? (That would be the popular SceneTap ...”

“... deployed to puncture and deflate any moment when excessive ickiness started creeping in. Dad gets self-pitying and clichéd; ‘Eugh,’ Crow says, ‘you sound like a fridge magnet.’ Lanny is less simple and more ambitious, encompassing vaster territory, describing an archetype of a village that also represents the whole of England. Toothwort’s memory ...”

“... then Ross’s freedom to see them independently might have been curtailed by a million yelps of self-interest. People speak to you because they have their own story in mind and want you to write it.Ross went her own way with the detail, but the reader will trust it if the work is done and the sentences are good.The door of Huston’s suite was opened by a ...”

“... team for the task ahead’ – the task of leaving the EU. Johnson, in Gove’s view, lacked the self-discipline and consistency needed to be prime minister (curiously, he seems to have changed his mind since then). Gove decided to stand himself; Johnson immediately pulled out of the race. But Gove’s reputation was damaged by his assassination of Johnson ...”

“... a panicked run of chickens – not so much chickens as a true whirling impression of chickens. In Self-Portrait of 1885 her brush and palette – despite being things of the utmost centrality to her life – are reduced to a few cursory brown lines and a tomato-red squiggle. By the end of this development – in Young Girl with a Greyhound (1893), Young Girl ...”

“... two years previously. The RAF was out to annihilate the island for ever and with it Germany’s self-respect. Had Germany not suffered enough? A number of initiatives began to document ‘British atrocities’ against ‘the German island’.Rüger goes on to provide a fascinating and ironic account of how the fate of Heligoland was now woven into the cause ...”

“... whose peculiarities, appearance and inner conflicts fill many pages. There is Apothecary Krikor, a self-taught pedant who lugs his enormous library to the hilltop. There is the sardonic schoolteacher Oskanian, Sato the mad nature-girl, Bedros Altouni the patient village doctor and ancient Nunik, ‘chieftainess of magic healers and conjuring ...”

“... representative in whom her people see their better selves ideally reflected’. That better self had to be reflected in the queen’s family. If the marriage went ahead, ‘the princess will be entering into a union which vast numbers of her sister’s people, all sincerely anxious for her lifelong happiness, cannot in conscience regard as a ...”

“... to pursue their own private vendettas. An Asháninka group portrait from In the Amazon Jungles, a self-serving account published in 1932 by Fernando Stahl, a Seventh Day Adventist missionary, presents a prodigiously sullen group cradling chin-high bows and the occasional antiquated rifle. ‘A band of murderers,’ Stahl glosses. Photographs from the ...”

“... a demagogue, perhaps beholden to a foreign government, rising to power. James Madison had a more self-interested objection to popular election. The political power of the South, where slaves made up 40 per cent or more of the population, had hugely increased, thanks to a clause adding three-fifths of the slave population to the number of free inhabitants ...”

“... whole. Those who over the years found Teller to be an ‘organisational disaster’ – petulant, self-centred, tyrannical, deceitful and ultimately disloyal to his friends and colleagues – likewise misunderstand the man. ‘My friendships are deeply important to me,’ Teller writes: ‘I much prefer to get along with everyone, so when someone I care about ...”