“... On 15 June 2009, Gordon Brown announced an inquiry into the Iraq war – to investigate, as Sir John Chilcot, the inquiry’s chairman, put it, ‘the UK’s involvement in Iraq, including the way decisions were made and actions taken, to establish, as accurately as possible, what happened and to identify the lessons that can be learned’. Although oral ...”

“... incidents he prefers to gloss over. Ferguson had a share in the horse with the Irish businessman John Magnier, a very wealthy man whose interests (in conjunction with his associate J.P. McManus) ranged from stud farms to currency trading. What started out as a bit of fun turned deadly serious once Rock of Gibraltar began winning race after race, making him ...”

“... Romania, for example. The problems were forcefully pointed out by the troops on the ground when John Major went to visit them in Kuwait after the war. He said that Options for Change would not be implemented until the lessons of the war had been analysed. However, Tom King, then the Secretary of State for Defence, had already promised to give the outline to ...”

“... the Holy Grail for the Knights Not Round the Table – Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Sir Bill Cash, Sir John Redwood et al – and they have devoted their adult lives to it. But they have more in mind than this. They hope also to undo the constitutional and administrative reforms of the Blair years. What they want to achieve is a ...”

“... Castlereagh and George Canning can drive from their imagination the more recent feud between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, accounts of which made me thankful there are no firearms stored (within easy reach) at Downing Street. Duels are now fought with shouting matches, spin doctors and snide public allusions to ‘the bloke next door’. The toxic mix of ...”

“... superfluous historical baggage. It’s all very well to argue that nowadays we should substitute Blair or Whitehall or the state for the Crown, but to claim that the Lib Dem creed remains, as ever, to limit the powers of government is stretching a point. Liberalism arose in a specific political landscape where kings mattered supremely, and it cannot readily ...”

“... hostility to the Community. She was still strong enough to ensure that her favoured successor, John Major, took over, but it soon became clear that he had no more intention than Lawson or Howe of hewing to her vision of Europe. With scarcely over a year in office behind him, Major signed the Treaty of Maastricht, after negotiating an opt-out from the ...”

“... East, were furious at what they saw as the gesture politics of Bill Clinton and his adjutant Tony Blair. Most Saudis despise Saddam Hussein, but this does not automatically translate – as many in Washington seem to believe – into an uncritical pro-Americanism. On the contrary, Saudi Arabia, characterised by deep-rooted Islamic conservatism, is painfully ...”

“... in his conversation. At tables, in cars, in foyers, on the phone, Karel Reisz and his wife, Betsy Blair, were always at the centre of talk. The London Review decided to orchestrate a tribute to this most elegant and spirited of men, and immediately there was only one way to make it work – by getting the people who knew him talking. Andrew O’Hagan Michael ...”

“... in December 1997, at the supposed nadir of the Windsor clan’s popularity, and the zenith of Tony Blair’s, the Prime Minister’s approval rating in a MORI poll was, at 61 per cent, the same as that for Prince Charles, detested ex-spouse of the Althorp Madonna and prime scapegoat for her death. Even immediately after the Paris shunt, a mere 18 per cent ...”

“... the Daily Express quoted Richards from the book on the subject of the Iraq war: ‘I sent [Tony Blair] a letter saying it was too late to pull out now baby, you had better stick to the guns. If I had spare time I’d go out there and give them a shot or two myself … I’d terrify them!’ Could I have missed this? There’s nothing in the index, but then ...”

“... in a political and intellectual dead-end. But this is to over-individualise what has happened. If Blair went who could succeed him? Not Gordon Brown, a formidable personality, but all too often obstinate in the defence of bad ideas, and as much responsible for Labour’s failure to see just how financially decrepit our public institutions were (and are) as ...”

“... law did not allow them to be confiscated. The PSI is the brainchild of the unapologetically brash John Bolton, who served as under-secretary of state for arms control and international security during Bush’s first term, before being nominated, to the consternation of most career diplomats, as US ambassador to the UN. Bolton is an accomplished international ...”

“... get what you pay for. Each concept has acquired constitutional legitimacy in its time – for, as John Griffith famously observed, the constitution is what happens. So when you pick up The New British Constitution and ask what new constitution that might be, one answer is that the British constitution, because it is always changing, is always new. But the ...”

“... the Queen from taking over the negotiations about Iraq with President Bush, or indeed from sacking Blair altogether and replacing him with a timeserver of her choice. No law stopped the Lords vetoing Lloyd George’s People’s Budget of 1909 – until they did it, and were duly (after a political rather than a legal crisis) punished. The British Constitution ...”