“... that they throw on the long-standing priorities of our ancestors. The need for a household to be self-supporting over a wide range of personal capacities for work has forced families into long-term strategies. It is obvious that children must be cared for until they can begin work, and that even then their contribution to a family economy will usually be ...”

“... of the rapport between Blair and Clinton and the genuineness of Blair’s populism, penchant for self-made multimillionaires, and pleasure in throwing parties at Downing Street for pop stars. I ask a question, ‘Whatever happened to Labour’s commitment to the principle of progressive income tax?’ to which Ross replies that he doesn’t know ...”

“... governance was fairly thoroughly devolved at an administrative level, but this devolution was only self-sustaining while there was a harmony of interest at the political level. As the advantages of close association with their southern equivalents dwindled, the professional class no longer had any reason to deny the advantage of Home Rule. This is not to say ...”

“... This ought to be a golden age for Hellenistic poetry, Hunter suggests uncertainly, now that self-consciousness is once again à la mode. Apollonius’ post as head of the Library, once used to dismiss his poetry as hermetic and bibliothecal, allows Hunter to sound the tally-ho in pursuit of intertextuality. The debt to Homer is no longer seen as ...”

“... if a woman of the Revolution asked for freedom, what did she want it for? Not, it is clear, for self-realisation; but to serve the community. She wants to have responsibilities as well as rights; to bear arms in defence of her country and her revolution. Her feminist demands, if they are that, exist in the context of wider political demands, and ...”

“... but an allegory for the reconjunction of the masculine and feminine components of one’s divided self,’ and ‘bisexuality is the archetypal quality of the creator.’ No arguing with that. We shall do best, perhaps, to view this language as an elaborate metaphor for Schwarz’s own affection and admiration for Duchamp. Certainly it’s hard to see how it ...”

“... Out of this world came his beautiful lament, Utopia (1516), whose ironies would come to seem self-ironies, and whose playful negatives would curdle into the mean calculations of More’s later years. For in the inverted island world of Utopia, divorce is permissible and the inhabitants can follow any religion they like; these would become the two ...”

“... these couples co-owned her Hyde Park cottage.) Recovering her vocation, Eleanor Roosevelt gained a self: engagement with the world liberated her from romantic exclusivity and claustrophobic domesticity. When FDR once asked his supper guests to name four outstanding political leaders, himself choosing Franklin, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and an obscure adviser ...”

“... those who did not understand their consequences and were often most effective when at their most self-serving. The decline of Yeltsin nevertheless coincided – until this year – with the stabilisation of the economy, the transfer of an extraordinary proportion of Russia’s industry into private (if often corrupt) hands, the establishment of a vigorous ...”

“... beautifully inexpressive. It meant that he could work at his writing without the painful risks of self-revelation. From this one texte-genèse he claims that he was able to derive the whole of his Impressions d’Afrique, though neither of the key sentences occurs verbatim in that 300-page book. What they gave him was first a plot and then a literary ...”

“... of basic technical competence in rhyme and metre. Their worlds are insistently (and often a touch self-righteously) domestic: they are full of husbands and wives, rather than lovers and girlfriends, of in-laws, aunties, the rubble of toys on the living-room floor, jobs (and failing to get jobs), holidays (family packages to the South of France and Morocco ...”

“... examined their own interests a little more thoughtfully they would surely be delighted at this self-inflicted paralysis on the part of the Government. But one of the most heartening sides of the new South Africa is the lack of such cynicism: people of all races and persuasions, even the most reactionary, want the new government to work. Yet the fact is ...”

“... in the hope of winning was a tiresome affair and the woes of the poet show as much exasperation as self-pity. Occasionally they are played for laughs in the spirit of the good clown (‘le bon follastre’), one of the ways Villon imagined he would be remembered, whereupon complaint gives way to bathos. In the inscription, he urges a commemorative verse to be ...”

“... like at the end of his days.’ Charlie was probably shadowed a little by Beef, his gamely young self: he was no stranger to the world he lived in. But family life seemed to have him in its grip; it reformed him; it placed him in a new relation to his surroundings – he was a father, and a husband who loved his wife – and the old temptations must have ...”

“... was a full-scale dock strike. He was calm but disappointed. Later, sharing with me a moment of self-reproach, he said he regretted not having ‘winged’ one of them. ‘Then the rest would have pretty quickly toed the line.’ He had been in similar situations before. He went back on board and I followed. I explained to the officer of the watch that I ...”