“... these men follow their base instincts, when they find themselves incapable of exercising any more self-restraint than the dog who tried to mount her when she was six. Talking about her abusive ex-partner, she is similarly fatalistic:Steve Silver is in the racing hall of fame, but when he drank he’d beat me. I was with him seven years. He wouldn’t let me ...”

“... home in this anti-apartheid warren and his word ‘ingenuity’ seems to honour the busy African self-reinvention he could still see in the workshops: ingenuity was about making good from making do, trying to keep the show on the road. In one image a young boy in short trousers, short sleeves and tie is poised on tiptoe tuning an antique three-string double ...”

“... must have belonged to adults who suffered from ‘malnutrition’, a mind-boggling level of self-deception. (Krznaric is better known as a pop philosopher, but his doctoral dissertation was based on a revealing set of interviews with Guatemala’s power-brokers, people who generally never speak.) Many in Guatemala would still like to believe that human ...”

“... deals or infrastructure contracts.Kuper thinks Labour’s success at fund-raising reflects ‘a self-reinforcing symbiosis between the political positions that the donors want, what Starmer instinctively wants, and what seems to make electoral sense’. The party’s record haul of donations doesn’t include the millions that have flowed into Labour ...”

“... the classical study of kinship systems had foundered on the rocks of the discipline’s endemic self-critique. Godelier’s The Metamorphoses of Kinship (2004) brought the subject back to the fore with an energy rarely found in contemporary anthropological writing. The book ranged widely, examining the long history of the field; the way that kinship had ...”

“... which banned all works of instruction in the magical arts. But this turned out to be another self-defeating measure that did more to excite interest in the prohibited books than anything else.According to Davies, a shift in the official view of magic was precipitated by the investigation in 1678 into a plot to poison Louis XIV. As the recently created ...”

“... been drawn to film for similar reasons: in Cooper’s phrasing, ‘the safety of repetition’, ‘self-protection’, a way of enjoying one’s ‘separateness’ and an opportunity for ‘inner identification’, as well as an occasion for pleasure and a source of education. Until Brian becomes a BFI regular, we are told in the opening paragraph, his ...”

“... original confession. He now claims that he never intended to murder either man. He only acted in self-defence – Pereira fired at him first.Pelado’s family had moved to Brazil’s north-west corner during the dictatorship, and he grew up in the Javari Valley. He was four when a pair of Petrobrás oil surveyors were clubbed to death by Korubo warriors; in ...”

“... ways of reading across life and work, combining print and manuscript sources, placing self-lacerating diary entries alongside a differently devastating polemic – that might not otherwise be available. Johnson’s writings seemed to his contemporaries to offer personal guidance for all stages of life. Chance acquaintances, regular correspondents ...”

“... enhancer of other sources of wellbeing, such as creative work or immersion in nature; or indeed as self-medication without professional involvement.Nobody at the MAPS conference wants to have this conversation. Insel advised that ‘psychedelics would probably need to be rebranded in the public mind and it would be essential to steer clear of anything that ...”

“... to the more desirous and devouring end of the love-song spectrum – there would be no pleading or self-abasement, and if you didn’t answer the bloody phone she would just ring it off the wall. Harry’s voice was not big, not powerful, but she taught herself to use it with tremendous precision: Chapman hadn’t realised, he said, that she’d planned to do ...”

“... a blueprint for a new constitutional balance between Britain and the wider empire. It proposed self-government for the Bay via a local assembly like that of Jamaica, which would be responsible for regulating trade with Britain and collecting duties for the Crown, in exchange for a guarantee that the British army would enforce their rights when ...”

“... palace. All those are helpful. But they come second to two basic forms of knowledge. The first is self-knowledge: what the hell do you think you are doing? Are you clear about your aim, are you just getting rid of the current rulers, or installing a regime you have designed to be your obedient servant for years to come (in which case invasion might be simpler ...”

“... silver thread.’ We must not forget either that Jacob is himself a merchant, though a lazy and self-indulgent specimen: ‘Jacob never sits in the office, but rather at a little table having tea, dressed lavishly, like a Turk, in a blue-green Turkish caftan and a dark-red Turkish cap. Before they get down to business, they always have to have two or three ...”

“... the said Henry Porter’ – but was acquitted by the jury at Southwark Assizes on a plea of self-defence. It’s the unspoken backstory of Beech’s Tragedy, direct from the mean streets of the Bankside. It adds a further shade of noir to this relic from the Rose’s true crime repertoire.Listen to Charles Nicholl discuss this piece with Thomas Jones on ...”