“... without a moment’s hesitation. The first, of course, is Dr Owen himself, whose absence of self-doubt is almost as awesome as Mrs Thatcher’s. The other, I am left to assume, is the wholly admirable Debbie Owen, who personifies (and I am quite serious here) all three of the Platonic virtues of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. One of the redeeming features ...”

“... Instead, they have become an underclass trapped in ghettos which (in Lemann’s words) their ‘self-destructive behaviour ... drug use, out-of-wedlock childbearing, dropping out of school’ have turned into ‘among the worst places to live in the world’. What went wrong? It certainly wasn’t that American blacks lacked ...”

“... family regime of ‘black-bloodedness’ (a term which Charles Tennyson popularised) ‘the boyish self-confidence disappeared and Alfred became subject to those moods of self-torment and remorse which are not uncommon in boys of sensitive nature.’ Happily in later life, the poet was able gradually ‘to free himself from ...”

“... a desperate situation to work his best, or indeed to work at all. Wordsworth made the comment that Robert Southey, Coleridge’s brother-in-law, ‘writes too much at his ease’, but the criticism could equally have applied to Wordsworth himself, not because Wordsworth found composition easy – it gave him the psychosomatic pains which only afflicted ...”

“... dimly), with a few other indistinct figures swimming through the suffocating depths of his self-regard. Wolfe could see clearly enough the myriad disconnected objects that helped to furnish his boundless ego. But like Funes the Memorious, he could neither forget anything he saw nor imagine anything he had not seen. The one subject Wolfe does offer a ...”

“... sounds the nicest, and certainly the most soulful, though not without faults: she was terribly self-absorbed and self-pitying. James Fox is her grandson, but he gives her only just over two columns of entries in his index, while Nancy has four and a half, with a long section on ‘character’. It has subheadings for ...”

“... to look at it with a mixture of fascination and discomfort. The near-bankruptcy of the largest self-governing city in the industrialised world was certainly a circus worth watching, and, as many other American cities soon discovered, it could not be watched disinterestedly. The aversion of investors for bonds and notes issued by New York City soon spread ...”

“... of perceiving, judging, wanting and the like, an additional experience of the unity of the self whose experiences they are? If the generalisations of science extend, as they do, to the unobserved and now unobservable past, how can our present observations provide grounds for rational belief in them? These are among the central internal problems of ...”

“... that Hardy was fond of the remembered young man who had written them, and that he had no sense of self-criticism, ever. Hardy’s turn to verse may be the most interesting event in his life during these years, but it is not a major subject in his letters. Here neither literature nor life concerns him much: his principal subjects are business and health. It is ...”

“... binding acts nowadays as a warning signal to look more closely at the contents of his morocco.’ Robert Riviere outforged Thomas Wise by at least a hundred to one. The only other distinction to be made between them is in the nebulous sphere of intention. The binder did not actively intend to deceive, merely to repair (although perusal of the stock and ...”

“... onto a screen of what is actual and present by means of the poet’s tactic ... That godlike self, never known before, comes into focus and vanishes again in one quick shift of view. As the planes of vision jump, the actual self and the ideal self and the difference between them ...”

“... does he find a curious sub-genre of conceptual art, as in certain works-on-paper by Les Levine and Robert Morris which in effect are, as well as are of, financial instruments Further examples: a joke cheque by Duchamp with which he paid a dentist’s bill, or a ten D-mark bill on which Joseph Beuys writes ‘Kunst = KAPITAL,’ and signs it, giving it a value ...”

“... fear of stimulating anti-semitism turned Leo Frank into a gentile Yankee businessman. But Robert Rossen, the young Jewish Communist who adapted the story for the screen, didn’t forget what he saw as his own betrayal of the Jews. A decade later, directing the first Hollywood Jewish/black buddy film, Body and Soul, Rossen made the last shot of They ...”

“... to convey this understanding of history: even controversial figures like the rapacious conqueror Robert Clive were enrolled in the pantheon of imperial greatness. The statue of the Bristol slave trader Edward Colston, toppled last year, was put up in 1895, though he died in 1721. But the strategy was a failure: more people learned about Colston in the 24 ...”