“... 1975. Then, the prime minister, Harold Wilson, had gone through the motions of a renegotiation of Britain’s place in the European Economic Community and, with that token effort behind him, shepherded the forces of pragmatism to a resounding victory for remaining in the Common Market. The pro-Europeans defeated the antis by a margin of 67 per cent to 33 per ...”

“... The history of modern Britain is to a considerable degree the history of the Tory Party, Europe’s – and perhaps the world’s – oldest political party. Or at least the equal oldest party, since it is unusual for the supporters of the status quo to initiate partisan politics. Conservative politics are reactive, a poor second best to the conservative’s preferred condition, one of no politics at all ...”

“... begins to be conceivable that the new alliance will actually break the mould of British politics. Britain is likely to have an SDP/Liberal government after the next election unless one of three things happens: 1. The Conservative Government gets its act together. If monetarism triumphs, so that, within the next two years, the economy develops a strong upward ...”

“... precautions would only grudgingly be allowed to interfere with profit-making. It was the egregious Ian Sproat, in charge of shipping at the Department of Trade and Industry until (astonishingly) he lost his seat in the 1983 Election, who summed up the Government’s attitude to safety at sea with the unforgettable assurance to the House of Commons: ‘The ...”

“... the opportunity to protest that ‘slavery’ was a ‘terminological inexactitude’. In Britain such Chinese as were not in the laundry business huddled in places like Limehouse, where they admitted society riff-raff to their opium dens and, according to a social investigator, practised ‘nameless vices which we never mention, but which are not so ...”

“... want the brother of a British prince to be an Arab Muslim.’ In an earlier statement, he accused Britain of ‘executing an Arab citizen and a British citizen simply because the Arab wished to marry a British princess. British and French intelligence planned this together. It is an act of racial and religious discrimination.’ Gaddafi, everyone knows, is ...”

“... union opposition). With no background, loyalties or long-term future in the NCB (or indeed even in Britain), Ian MacGregor typifies the abrasive commercialism of new-style public-sector management heads. (Ironically this Florida voter, with his anti-union reputation, admiration for Tory economics, and even greater private ...”

“... When​ historians examine Britain’s departure from the European Union, one of the things that will puzzle them is the behaviour of the Conservative Party. Thanks to copious demographic and geographical analysis, we are already in a position to make sense of the referendum result itself. But it remains difficult to grasp how the Tories could effectively have taken what was to everyone else a fringe issue and used it to attack the interests they had until very recently represented: the City of London, big business, the Union, even Whitehall ...”

“... is no obstacle to the spread of tobacco. Nor is poverty anywhere a disincentive to smoking. In Britain, men and women in unskilled manual labour are nearly three times more likely to smoke than professionals. Poor smokers die sooner than wealthy ones, but even Mrs Willis of Bath would have to concede that if a British smoker from ‘social class five’ is ...”

“... The first three volumes of The Buildings of England appeared in 1951, the year of the Festival of Britain. The last, Staffordshire, was published in 1974, on the eve of the miners’ strike and the three-day week. Nikolaus Pevsner, begetter, editor and principal author of the series, had travelled thousands of miles over those years ...”

“... We owe a large debt to the famous chapter on Robinson Crusoe in Ian Watt’s The Rise of the Novel. Watt really made us use our wits about that novel and forced us to relate it to our most serious interests. Reread after twenty years, moreover, the chapter still has all of its intellectual impact and verve. The trouble is, I now find myself wanting to quarrel with almost every sentence in it ...”

“... job of interpretation properly were it not for the published work of academics. One such man is Ian Buruma. Educated in the Netherlands but writing in English, Buruma is known for his work on the Far Eastern Economic Review and in the New York Times, and as the author of A Japanese Mirror, a racy book on the Japanese underworld. God’s Dust, too, is ...”

“... intellectuals were rarely able to travel), and from several Western countries, mostly Britain. They include academics of great distinction in a wide range of disciplines from both parts of Europe, most of them with long experience of both worlds. Since the papers were written, Eastern Europe has changed hugely, and it is a mark of the excellence ...”

“... the antipodean opposite of today’s showboaty X Factor model.Sinatra Sings Great Songs from Great Britain (1962) isn’t one of the more celebrated Sinatra collections, but it’s a tribute to how the music business operated in that era that something knocked out in three days sounds the way it does: note-perfect, rococo, panoramic. Today, such a project ...”

“... role East of Suez’, but he was sceptical of Nato’s nuclear strategy and of the concept of Britain’s independent deterrent. After 1968, he was a political freelance, and Cosgrave makes large claims on his behalf: that he supplied the victory margin for the Tories in 1970 despite the party leader, and that he destroyed that leader, Edward Heath, in ...”