“... on the Foot, Kinnock, Smith and Blair eras to stand alongside the efforts of Crossman, Castle and Benn (none of whom chose to resign office, though in Benn’s case it remains hard to know why). However guarded Cook’s entries may sometimes be, and despite a few passages that were evidently included for public ...”

“... this was outrageous and he was going to accept the challenge of the Sunday Times. In order to kill Tony Howard’s new job he forbade any of us to speak to him. Uncharacteristically, Crossman did not follow this entry with any comment or aside, and the remainder of the six-year narrative does not include any ‘off the record’ meetings with his ...”

“... treatment of Jenkins and Rodgers will also seem extraordinarily kind to those who remember some of Tony Crosland’s or even Jim Callaghan’s remarks, but Owen is beyond saving, even for Crewe and King. From the moment he is introduced – ‘a tendency to begin by arguing passionately on one side of an issue and to wind up arguing equally passionately on the ...”

“... is much more than that, and in this respect would have lost nothing from a little self-censorship. Tony Crosland is criticised again and again for his indecisiveness and his evident resentment of Barbara’s success in getting money for her policies, without consideration for the fact that a great deal must be ascribed to ...”

“... seems in Mullin’s case to display a characteristic roulade of humility and hubris. To go with ‘Tony’ would no doubt come across as faux intimate, but on the other hand, referring to the prime minister as ‘Blair’, or indeed ‘the prime minister’, wouldn’t have differentiated Mullin from the common run of people, for whom the PM was just a bloke ...”

“... opportunity.’ The ‘Individualist’ wing of the party, personified by the publisher Ernest Benn (uncle of Tony), for example, hoped that the country would now throw off the yoke of heavy taxation and tyrannical bureaucracy, but one result of the war was that the British had become accustomed to almost untrammelled ...”

“... to 75 per cent. Harvie, who is a bitterly anti-Thatcher Scot, writes glowingly and at length about Tony Benn’s role as Minister of Energy, but the fact is that Howe’s single stroke of the pen achieved more for the public sector than Benn did in his entire career. Harvie seems in general to believe that the handling ...”

“... on: obviously, you’ll focus your energy on that nudging. This is what Janet Downs and Melissa Benn, in their e-book School Myths, call ‘pseudo-improvement’ – the data look good, but the quality of the learning isn’t. At school level, as Downs and Benn say, it leads to a ‘narrow, impoverished ...”

“... not much,’ Julian said. ‘Ingratitude.’ ‘Well,’ Julian said, ‘if Tony Blair – a war criminal – can get £120,000, I should get at least £1 more than him.’ ‘You want me to write back to them and say you want more money?’ ‘Yes,’ said Julian. Later, Julian was on the phone trying to instruct Alan Dershowitz ...”

“... the most adverse repercussions on … Jewish-Christian relations in Britain’, while Rabbi Tony Bayfield, the head of the Reform movement, said: ‘There is a clear problem of anti-Zionist – verging on anti-semitic – attitudes emerging in the grass-roots, and even in the middle ranks of the Church.’ But the Church was guilty merely of protesting ...”