“... nurtured in Leeds or Bradford or Manchester has some sense of being a son or daughter of a solid self-confident city and that when, in due course, one went away as I did to university, the sense of being still part of the city, like it or not, is in one’s baggage.And, of course, for me and most of my schoolfellows, everything we have in the way of ...”

“... figures and public events – is almost unheard of. When the narrator assesses another woman’s self-presentation – ‘dressed all in black, black sweater and black trousers and black boots’ – she isn’t exactly vague but certainly generic. Doesn’t an apparently featureless style of this sort crackle with nuances of cut and material?Listing ...”

“... In 1908, shortly before he joined the Dutch Theosophical Society, he sketched a series of self-portraits in which his eyes, enlarged and penetrating, looming right up against the picture plane, seem points of connection between the soul and material body. But his spiritualism also bled into his still lifes and landscapes in ways that were connected to ...”

“... When does ‘woke’ move from its original meaning of ‘alert to racism’ and turn into self-righteous hectoring? When should an anti-abortion campaigner be entitled to carry a placard outside an abortion clinic, or, come to that, when should a women’s-right-to-chooser be allowed to stake out the home of an anti-abortion campaigner? There is a ...”

“... anioto trial in 1920, the colonial administration hanged several of the accused.The museum’s self-examination predates its five-year redesign. On the eve of the millennium, two books about the imperial past caused a stir in Belgium: Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost (1998) and Ludo De Witte’s L’Assassinat de Lumumba (1999). They were met ...”

“... of an insurgent party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). Celebrity sportsman turned statesman, Khan self-consciously positioned himself as anti-elite. True, he attended Aitchison College, the Lahore school that educates Pakistan’s high society, but he claimed he had felt like an outsider there. Khan founded the PTI in 1996, though for many years the party was ...”

“... rules’, which dominated financial commentary in the build-up to the budget. The aim of such self-imposed rules is to satisfy the bond markets that governments have set sensible limits to their borrowing plans, and are behaving rationally and predictably (as opposed to ‘politically’) in their spending decisions. The bond markets don’t like politics ...”

“... is nevertheless true knowledge about people in our society, the suicides and those who meditate self-destruction. They have grown through their lives to conform to the meanings and the stereotypes that the knowledge teaches. Genius has put on an amazing number of masks since the word was used with such effect in antiquity. The term – I hardly dare to call ...”

“... be made up by yet another wheely from Reg’s junk stall. Miss S. never mastered the technique of self-propulsion in the wheelchair because she refused to use the inner hand wheel (‘I can’t be doing with all that silliness’). Instead, she preferred to punt herself along with two walking-sticks, looking in the process rather like a skier on the ...”

“... harm from every point of view. The lack of dignity, the utter squalor and contemptible lack of self-control are really too horrible to contemplate.’ Coward, who never came out, appears torn between compassion, blame and the vehement disgust of columnists like John Gordon, who feasted on the case. He seems to own a vague idea of tactics towards legal ...”

“... not because of any special wisdom, conviction or statesmanship, but from the universal reflex of self-preservation. Even Hitler, mad as he was, rejected the use of Nazi supplies of poison gas, because he had had a whiff of it in the First World War and understood that, if the Germans were to initiate its use, everyone, including Germany, would be enveloped ...”

“... of intelligence. Some social success was obviously necessary, but so was a deep reserve and a deep self-esteem. He found Joyce to be ‘a quiet but rather dogmatic man’ who had ‘(as I am convinced most superior persons have) a sense of his own importance’. And Eliot was certainly a superior person. It happens that the letters have little to say about ...”

“... had read about in London in the 1910s. But those were later developments; and they were elaborate self-deceptions with which Pound rationalised his continuing support for a regime whose moral bankruptcy was increasingly apparent. They were not what had sparked his initial interest, as he acknowledged in an unpublished essay of 1933: ‘I bet on Italian ...”

“... case. But if he can, then Clinton should have refused to waive his ordinary right against self-incrimination. If, for over-riding political reasons, Clinton had to accept being deposed before the grand jury, Dershowitz adds, he should have appeared in person rather than allowing himself to be videotaped, knowing that the video would probably be releas ...”

“... Had I put on the recording myself the spell would have been nowhere near as powerful because self-induced. Why this should be I can’t think, though doubtless Proust would know.7 September. Alan Clark dies. I never met him, though I saw him once in the street, noting then that he shared a walk with Denis Healey, both of them swinging their arms ...”