“... invigilators, we encounter a brutal parody of high politics in the outside world: shame, betrayal, self-deception and the art of deceiving others, though the guards in Tazmamart were the inmates’ only public. BineBine pitied them. They were ‘the dregs of colonisation, poor wretches, who had lost their souls after selling their consciences to a system they ...”

“... Contrary to a well-known English dictum, stoical if self-exonerating, all political lives do not end in failure. In postwar Europe, it is enough to think of Adenauer or De Gasperi, or perhaps even more impressively, Franco. But it is true that, in democratic conditions, to be more popular at the close than at the outset of a prolonged period in office is rare ...”

“... for perjury applicable to evidence given to the Inquiry? Does the normal protection against self-incrimination apply? I have not found firm rulings on these matters, and the imprecision is, I think, deliberate. Nothing like the Bloody Sunday Inquiry has ever taken place in Britain or a Commonwealth country before, and there are no precedents. No Royal ...”

“... social services and the police. The risks she took were not reasonable in the circumstances but self-interested. If she had really cared about her baby, they argued, she would have handed her in.But Marten felt she had no choice. She wanted to have a family with Gordon: meeting him was ‘fate’, she said. She knew that any child she had with him would be ...”

“... another group, Stop HS2, has had to launch an appeal to pay its co-ordinator, Joe Rukin, who is self-employed; in December he was paid just £380, which Rukin said had forced him to ‘reconsider his position’. Despite this group’s lack of funds, supporters of HS2 have tended to dismiss the ‘antis’ as well-heeled Buckinghamshire residents, more ...”

“... that I sometimes thought I might have a heart attack from the anger that shot up from its coiled self in Shoot-Up Hill, as it sprang powerful and metallic but always kept inside. Not really dangerous, honestly, an anger that afflicted only me. Another door. This time the right sort. Me on the outside, Doris inside. I knock, although she knows I’m there ...”

“... could get some young blood who doesn’t know how things were managed, or that the Pennines were self-policing in them days. When we do arrange a get-together we don’t go to the Rat Trappers but to a place in Saddleworth where nobody knows us. We are down one these days; even at seven, Vin had fags in his pocket and his brother used to punch him for ...”

“... own voice, her innocence, her habit of ironing her husband’s Jockey shorts. This is not so much self-absorbed as honest: she was charming, she was lovable, she was the magnet to which most metal flies. As well as a list of houses, she could have written a list of the names she used for herself: Dolores, Maggie, Carlotta, Claudia, Maria, Maya. (How do ...”

“... of restricted data as a jumble of accidents, ideologies, political expediencies, bureaucratic self-interest and unintended consequences. He’s not against the idea of state secrets. He just thinks that the history of American attempts to keep nuclear secrets is what you get when politicians think badly about what scientific knowledge is, about the ...”

“... day. It isn’t only the overtly gorgeous passages that shine. Here’s a sentence, anything but self-advertising, from late in the new novel: ‘There was the noise, like a rough breath, of the drawer pulled open for socks and pants, the surprised little squeak of the wardrobe and the flick of hangers as he chose a shirt.’ A man in bed, lazing after sex ...”

“... in music as Flaubert does in the history of the novel, the moment at which the form becomes self-conscious, measures its new distance from the relative innocence of its tradition and announces to its audience: ‘Catch up if you can.’ If we don’t get it, it’s our fault. Hoffmann happily insulted the general audience: ‘Beethoven’s mighty genius ...”

“... not something she needs to think about. One taste of high-grade heroin clouds her mind with self-delight. ‘I’m all primary process,’ she says. ‘I live the examined life. Not one funny little thing gets by me.’Marge is fine with Converse’s plan. He knows a Marine called Ray Hicks, a Zen martial arts enthusiast who will soon be heading home on ...”

“... to do it in. ‘My attachment to England was instinctive, a bid for, if not roots, a kind of self-preservation … I held onto the English language as the rope to save me from drifting awash in the fluidities of multilingualism that surrounded me.’ German seems never to have been an option, partly because of ‘the vast and monstrous thing’, as she ...”

“... attempts to answer himself, do you do with your love of American history? Where to put the self that visits graveyards in other cities, on vacation, even putting off the pleasurable sightseeing of wife and children to kneel down and do a grave-rubbing in crayon? He works best in small biodomes, and what better than a cemetery? We can visualise it as a ...”

“... the point of abjection, merely reinforced the problem it was meant to resolve: a crippling lack of self-esteem. Some bitter quarrels ensued. None lasted long enough to destroy their absolute conviction that love for each other had been the great event of both their lives. Ackland died of cancer on 9 November 1969. Warner survived for a further eight years. The ...”