“... the British economy in an afternoon, by miscalculating the new tax ... this simply illustrates the self-importance to which ministers are susceptible.’ But it doesn’t: you could buy fleet after fleet of new battleships with the money the PRT brought pouring in. Nor has Tommy Balogh (who died in 1985) yet had the credit he deserved: he is now chiefly ...”

“... over the Institute for Advanced Study years. ‘Or perhaps so many exhausted balloons’ is a self-conscious, superfluous flourish, after the vivid speed of ‘so many rag dolls’. Pak Parman would never have ‘whispered counter-hypotheses’. ‘People’ have displaced Djojo, and we get no chance to hear what their ‘hypotheses’ actually are. And ...”

“... liberals end up as gallant losers because they don’t have the killer instinct, they’re too self-defeatingly nice. Macleod, like Bobby Kennedy, was that rare thing, a tough-minded liberal, willing to get his hands dirty to do the right thing and win: it was one of the reasons he was a Tory. Such people do not get to the very top but they are more ...”

“... agent, the turned man. He has a public persona as ‘Ben Watson’ (apologist for his nocturnal self, the crazed poet), columnist for the Wire, broadcaster, and author of the monumental and magnificent folly, Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play. Watson, if he wanted to carry his argument outside the poetry ghetto, had to adopt protective ...”

“... of the Earth were set out in that piece: population pressure, the death of the nation-state, the self-service style of Third World government, influx into the cities and ‘a pre-Modern formlessness’ in remote, late 20th-century battlefields about which no one cares but the protagonists. Cantering through this slow-motion apocalypse were two new ...”

“... from politics, but it turned out that this could not be done, at least by him. He wanted self-government for Ireland, but was sure that more than that was needed if the new Ireland were not to be demoralised. This conviction had political implications. ‘It may well be that Ireland will have to become irreligious or unpolitical even, before she can ...”

“... austere traditions of the Roman Republic its gladiators found the ideals and the art-forms, the self-deceptions that they needed in order to conceal from themselves the bourgeois limitations of the content of their struggles.’ But the ‘bourgeois’ limitations were also national. Elites might imaginatively reconfigure themselves along transnational ...”

“... of pre-payment meters, fed by coins, tokens or smart cards. The consequence has been widespread ‘self-disconnection’. A study by the Joseph Rowntree Trust found that pre-payment meters result in people cutting down on cooked meals and baths. The most serious consequences of fuel poverty are obscured by the statistics: only 186 people died of hypothermia in ...”

“... have been brought into operation at the end of the European war had it not been for Sinn Fein’s self-defeating violence. On this version of history, the 1916 Rising and the subsequent IRA campaign diverted the country from a clear and agreed path to peace and hurtled it down a bloody cul-de-sac. My own pleasure at the Republic of Ireland’s present-day ...”

“... fils, beside him in the grave. The story is that of a famous prostitute, doomed by TB, redeemed by self-sacrifice, repentant of her sins, converted to the Catholic Church on her death-bed. It runs parallel in many ways with the story of Tannhäuser, who sought forgiveness from the Pope after escaping from the spell of Venus – except that Tannhäuser is ...”

“... concern has subtly shifted from the human rights of the East Timorese toward their right to self-determination. In this shift, Suharto’s age – he is now 74 – and growing signs of popular unrest in Indonesia, as well as conflicts among the ruling élite, certainly play their role. For Jakarta there is no way out. A return to the policies of the ...”

“... from the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the Wiesenthal Center and self-respecting bookshops have boycotted it. I haven’t seen a copy anywhere: even survivalist bookshops seem to have run out. If you want The Turner Diaries and don’t want to buy an Uzi at the same time, mail order is still the easiest way to get it. The ...”

“... good financial sense and economy of space. The fact that it was empty only underlined the folly of self-indulgence into which my uncle had descended. To look, stooping slightly, from the deep-set windows onto the terrace and beyond it the river at the foot of a sloping expanse of grass, was to understand why ‘normal behaviour’ would in any case be ...”

“... Reputation became more mysterious, as makers, observers, critics and collectors formed into self-sustaining coteries. Reproduction has since enlarged the membership of such groups to the point where many species of Modernism have become popular, dominant even. But mere dissemination cannot magically re-assemble a single art of painting, or re-create the ...”

“... can be called that, is a chastening example of how an excess of piety can imperceptibly turn into self-aggrandising ...”