“... the process killing off a whole range of other initiatives that might have been more fruitful and self-sustaining. And now they were messengers from a lost world: the world in which British high-tech industry had existed since the Second World War, one sustained by the decisions of grandee industrialists and Whitehall mandarins with an ideal of the public ...”

“... regularly) were all much of a muchness, big, bold and, Mrs Ransome thought, with far too much self-confidence (she thought this was what they meant by ‘feisty’ and would have looked it up in Mr Ransome’s dictionary but wasn’t sure how it was spelled). They had names that defied gender: Robin, Bobby, Troy and some, like Tiffany, Page and ...”

“... expectation to demoralisation, all in one night.’ Sari Nusseibeh chooses his words carefully, self-consciously, perhaps even politically, searching for accuracy, but also considering the effect they will have. We are sitting in the exquisite reception room of his mother’s house on the Nablus road in East Jerusalem almost a month after his release from ...”

“... of the revolution. Unemployed, indeed largely unemployable, given to all manner of anti-social and self-destructive behaviour, and filled with an incoherent rage and bitterness, they provide a potential constituency for the radical populists of the PAC and the ANC Left. The most publicised members of this latter group are Harry Gwala, the Natal ANC-SACP ...”

“... make sense of complex or problematic novels or poems is to read them with a mind unburdened by the self-denying ordinances of modern critical dogma.’ But of course there are other forms of prejudice. Problems arising from arguments about truth and prejudice were to lead to noisy arguments about Donne. I believe firmly that Empson was a great critic, but have ...”

“... had anything to say about democracy in Croatia today, I missed it. Was he wisely shunning the self-righteousness which expects politics to be more ethical in small new states than big old ones? Or was he loath to spoil the clear Parisian outlines of the utopia he was sketching, a utopia of authentic patriotism? Krleza would not, one suspects, have been ...”

“... head of the introductory matter to the second OED, with its import prominently displayed in the self-lauding publicity material, Schäfer soberly remarks: The increasing discrepancy between the methods used at that time [i.e., when OED was compiled] and those used now for evaluation calls for a detailed analysis of the nature and reliability of the OED ...”

“... gold reserves, actually) to finance imports of consumer goods during the turbulent transition to a self-sustaining economy seem implausible – cautious leaders would hardly use this high-risk strategy. There are additional difficulties. Political culture – a factor as important as it is elusive – might prove an obstacle. The double reform will not succeed ...”

“... in a few days’ time. Only at that stage did it emerge that Ms Roberts was so full of naive self-belief that she really did think she would win, and wouldn’t hear a word more of this defeatist talk. She lost by 13,600. The second point is far more significant. Young notes that Mrs Thatcher has developed a close relationship with the large Jewish ...”

“... so engrossing that he seemed not to share the ennui, the sexual privation, the hangovers and the self-disgust that afflicted almost everybody else. The other exceptions were the doctor and a midshipman, who had been at Winchester together. These Wykehamists contentedly passed the hours walking the deck together, rarely speaking to anyone else, and then only ...”

“... of my life. AH: Re-reading the Out of the War stories, I’m amazed by their finesse. They breathe self-confidence. It seems to me extraordinary that after failing to place them you decided that you weren’t cut out for fiction. Where were you living at this time? FW: I lived in a house in Trevor Square, just opposite Harrods. I moved there with my mother ...”

“... and commonplace fights, the happy establishment of a high bourgeois marriage. Dr Urbino, a self-satisfied husband, is given to pronouncements on the matter. He told his medical students: ‘After ten years of marriage women had their periods as often as three times a week.’ To himself he mused: ‘The problem with marriage is that it ends every night ...”

“... from 100 per cent in 1953, 45 per cent in 1971 and 20 per cent in 1975) in favour of self-government within ‘a federation of nationalities’. The declaration also demanded ‘the immediate withdrawal from Ijawland of all military forces of occupation and repression by the Nigerian state’, and the complete cessation of ‘all exploration ...”

“... of a new style; and it was not until 1847 that Schumann managed to concentrate on what for any self-respecting composer was the ultimate goal – the creation of an opera. But Genoveva, based on tragedies by Friedrich Hebbel and Ludwig Tieck recounting the life of St Geneviève, was hardly a success in Schumann’s own lifetime, and it has entirely ...”

“... Reggie (The Sugar House), and her divorce and madness (Beyond the Glass), she leaves her fictional self on the verge of grown-up life. She could write about her schoolmaster father (the Botting of the Hillard and Botting Greek primers, who taught at St Paul’s), and her frivolous, snobbish mother (who called White ‘Tony’, rather than the inappropriate ...”