“... for the Gladstone Memorial Essay Prize, which was entitled ‘The State and the Railways in Great Britain 1823 – 63’ and which contained four hundred of them.At what point, I wonder, could anyone have seen it coming? The advance, I mean to say, of a mediocre but ruthless man without qualities? Philip Ziegler’s book charts the boy Wilson’s ghastly ...”

“... economics editor, has produced a book which is part show-biz – it carries a passionate puff from Ian McEwan on the front cover and leapt straight into the bestseller list – and part political event: it clearly aims to provide a sweeping economic and political platform for Labour, has been elaborated with the help of Tony Blair’s adviser, David ...”

“... a genteel resort facing east; and Margate, the faded one-time summer playground of industrial Britain, to the north. Farage will contest South Thanet, which comprises Ramsgate, Broadstairs, a sliver of coastal Margate called Cliftonville, and a swathe of extra-Thanetary land to the south that includes the town of Sandwich. One evening in early ...”

“... could afford them. There was what businessmen call ‘over-capacity’. Large firms like GEC in Britain, Aérospatiale in France and Messerschmitt in Germany, were licking their lips at the juicy technology and skilled workers waiting to be gobbled up from Yeovil. The prospect seemed familiar. The company would go into receivership. The banks would move in ...”

“... past. Thus accounts of the ‘first industrial revolution’ are now likely to address not merely Britain’s European competitors, but also the input of its slave plantations in the Caribbean, the role of textile technologies learned from India, and the degree to which all 17th and early 18th-century European powers lagged behind China economically. These ...”

“... The more Britain affects a déclassé manner while Thatcherism increases the gulf between rich and poor, the more it comes, superficially, to resemble Australia. Linguists speculate that the Australian accent at its purest and broadest is simply an intact version of late 18th and early 19th-century London English ...”

“... The British Museum – not a Museum of Britain’, so reads the caption on a photograph of the Museum’s imposing portico, at the start of a recent survey of national collections conducted by the Museums Journal. The BM is not an exhibition of the nation nor does it incorporate one coherently developed collection ...”

“... campaign will focus on three issues: taxation, crime and Europe. In this it will be abetted by Britain’s most popular daily newspaper. The Sun, as we know, offers the extreme populist version of right-wing policy and, because of the scale of its readership, is considered by politicians and the media to be an important determinant of ...”

“... We know all about Republican violence, about its worst excesses; in Britain, some people, maybe even most, know what the initials IRA stand for. I wonder how many could name the principal Loyalist organisations, still less distinguish between them. You could say that there has been little reason for the average Londoner to get acquainted with the world of Loyalist terror: the UFF do not bomb the City, the UVF don’t shoot policemen ...”

“... it seems to be the necessary map, though the country it shows seems significantly detached from ‘Britain’, or in Neal Ascherson’s rechristening, ‘Ukania’. To that group no longer embarrassed at calling itself the Scottish intelligentsia, the cultural opportunities now available in and from the country are simply so much more fascinating than anything ...”

“... Daniel Defoe​ , in his Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-26), was unimpressed by the prehistoric remains. Arriving at the circle of nineteen standing stones at Boscawen-Un in Cornwall, he noted with baffled irritation that ‘all that can be learn’d of them is, That here they are.’ Stonehenge left early modern viewers cold ...”

“... My​ military career was on the comic side.’ Self-protective irony was Ian Watt’s chosen register when describing his wartime experience some twenty years later. That experience began when the 24-year-old Lieutenant Watt was posted, along with the rest of the 5th Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment, to the Far East in the winter of 1941 ...”

“... as saying (September 1978): ‘Perhaps we are witnessing the end of the car-assembly industry in Britain, and that may be a good thing. BL has been a continuing drain on our resources and the British motor-car industry has done a great deal of damage to the reputation of this country.’ In February 1979 he reports Callaghan as saying that ‘we had got to ...”

“... of Keynesianism. The great problem of Keynes’s time was unemployment, at devastating levels in Britain for much of the 1920s and 1930s. For Keynes, this was proof that the economy was not a self-correcting machine: when unemployment was high, governments must use fiscal and monetary policy to increase aggregate demand, kickstarting the deployment of ...”

“... subsequent work on religion, literacy and the economy in Scotland has been widely read throughout Britain. Rosalind Mitchison’s work, especially on the Scottish poor in the 18th century, has been similarly influential. Both authors pose large questions which require response in a British context. Houston (who has worked extensively on both Northern England ...”