“... taken on lightness, so humour is comedy that has lost its bodily weight ... It casts doubt on the self, on the world, and on the whole network of relationships that are at stake.’ In Tuten’s novel, doubt is cast both on the self and on the world from the minute Tintin and his companions, Snowy and Captain Haddock, leave ...”

“... unusual for him. He couldn’t move, he told me, without getting out of breath, but he was his old self: by which I mean that he had reverted to that youthful self which he preserved intact into middle age – something caught so well in Tony Quinton’s sweet and genial tribute (Spectator, 8 July). ‘My doctor has given me ...”

“... good man. By ‘good’, Canetti makes it clear, he means untainted by any trace of levity, self-interest or obeisance to fashion. Broch finally remembers Dr Sonne and suggests how the other can meet him. Canetti does so and is captivated. Henceforth he meets this hero of heroes for two hours every day in the Café Museum. They talk and talk – or ...”

“... Do we have ‘friends’, or do we just know various people? There is something a bit sticky and self-conscious about the idea of friendship. Anyone can be in love and proud of it, but to have a ‘friend’ – no, it really won’t do. ‘I’m your friend,’ said Myfanwy to John as they crouched in the ‘dark and furry cupboard while the rest played hide-and-seek ...”

“... and psycho-analytic thinkers such as Barthes, Kristeva and Lacan, his was a name of which no self-respecting British intellectual could afford to remain entirely ignorant – though his novels, so far as I can discover, were neither translated nor read. But as Sollers grew older he abandoned his youthful Maoism to become a worshipper of American ...”

“... on, respectively, a word processor and a tape recorder needn’t be put down to Post-Modern self-consciousness. Novels naturally like to keep up with the technology on which they rely, but an appeal – however disingenuous – to external machinery and allegedly objective documentation is thoroughly classical. In skilled hands, such honesty about the ...”

“... accounts by Degas and Redon which show how the personality Delacroix projected – isolated, self-absorbed – was read by a younger generation of painters. Degas remembered seeing him, walking with his collar turned up and a scarf around his neck, ‘rapidly crossing the street, and stepping up on the other pavement, still going fast’. The memory ...”

“... devoted, commendably enough, to an inquiry into the problems of identity, or selfhood. The word ‘self’ turns up again and again. In ‘Purification’, from A Round of Applause (1962), he addresses an unspecified second person with the words: Wearing yourself as though it were The lightest of all garments, moving As though all answers were a mode of ...”

“... the works. Insofar as it is biographical, it easily refutes the charge that Peacock was a cold and self-indulgent eccentric. Elusive and strange the handsome lover of women may have been in his meditations on ‘free love’, he was passionate, too, in his family affections. His parents lived apart, and, perhaps, in such a man the affections would be more ...”

“... and Hitler’s Christian names: whichever of its dimensions you scrutinise, ‘this astounding self-portrait’ (we thought it was supposed to be ‘not … about muself’?) is shoddy at is most interesting, and journalese at its frequent emptiest. Stripped of the last vestige of verbal dignity and talking American slang,* Shostakovich simply makes an ...”

“... of the state. The positive side of the Liberal ideal, which Bradley brings out well, was to invoke self-help and the voluntary principle as the true means of promoting progress. This in turn meant leaving a great deal to individual responsibility and judgment, for good or ill. Newman put the philosophical objection here with some precision: ‘Liberalism is ...”

“... highway and railway line, cubes of light with boys in Canadiens jerseys, circling in the blissful self-absorption of being masters of their bodies, lost in the trance of the hard bright air and the sound of the blades on the ice. I might have stayed in Canada if I had been a good hockey player. I would have belonged. But the sense of exclusion from the ...”

“... some spontaneous emotional and intellectual reaction that has been only partly processed by self-conscious rationalisation. As Gran himself comments, with the passage of time ‘the memory of the hardship fades to leave the adventure bright and clear.’ A good diary should offer more than just ‘the adventure bright and clear’. One reason for ...”

“... standard is nothing less than perfection. In my experience, no species of performing artist is as self-critical as a dancer. I have gone backstage many times to congratulate a friend or acquaintance who is an actor or a pianist or a singer on his or her superlative performance; invariably my praise is received without much demurral, with evident pleasure (my ...”

“... of this ‘Arab’ trade in graphic detail. They weren’t insincere, but they weren’t devoid of self-interest either. Then, as today, the humanitarian campaigns to ‘save Africa’ became entwined with strategic political interests and big egos. As Jeal shows, even the ‘saintly’ Livingstone was vulnerable to the attractions of stardom, despite ...”