“... as 1940, when Chamberlain and the arch-appeasers were branded ‘the guilty men’ by a young Michael Foot and two other socialist polemicists. They overstated what was an arguable case, that the executors of appeasement’s closing phase had been arrogant, ignorant and insensitive; which naturally bred a counter-argument to the effect that they had been ...”

“... on Conservative economic policy. One of the most influential of modern Shakespeare critics, G. Wilson Knight, gave his blessing to Britain’s campaign against Argentina on the grounds that it embodied the essential spirit of Shakespeare’s plays. The myth of Shakespeare is also a powerful force for intellectual conservatism: its notion of essential ...”

“... ship had even left dock: We paraded 85 blocks down 5th ave today and were reviewed by President Wilson. About 75,000 were in line and we were ye star attraction. I was made a sergeant in ye squadron and led the 2nd Platoon out in the middle of the avenue all by myself and saluted Ye Great Woodrow. I felt lonesome. It was a Red Cross march but Hemingway ...”

“... putting the finishing touches to a government reshuffle that would see him shunt his old friend Michael Gove from the Department of Education to a new role as chief whip. In effect he was clearing the decks for the following year’s election and he needed one of his most contentious and least popular ministers to be less visible. Still, he discussed it ...”

“... the EEC, arguing that it would mean the end of a thousand years as an independent nation. Harold Wilson could not make a speedy break with this position, but by 1967 British economic decline was so pronounced that he was able to renew an application for events with all-party support, in a motion carried in the Commons by 487 to 26 votes – a high-water mark ...”

“... in power, made similar accusations against the Jews and many sects they deemed heretical. Michael Constantine Psellos, the Byzantine philosopher, wrote about the Bogomils: In the evening, when the candles are lit, at the time when we celebrate the redemptive Passion of Our Lord, they bring together, in a house appointed for the purpose, young girls ...”

“... Willie Whitelaw and Reginald Maudling (both Conservatives) and the diplomat Con O’Neill. Harold Wilson supported Britain’s continued membership of the Common Market, but did so from the sidelines, and – in a break from the norms of collective responsibility – allowed members of his cabinet to dissent from his own recommendation. The pro-Common Market ...”

“... systemic flaw in British colonialism in the 19th century, and for long afterwards: look at Harold Wilson and Rhodesia. Most colonies were run on a shoestring, and were expected to finance themselves. Generally the British depended on native collaborators to help them, and only in India did Britain have anything like the number of troops needed to impose its ...”

“... Projects Committee, which had nominal powers to dispense tiny sums to popular forms of art. Michael Astor and I spent much time examining claims on these funds, mostly on behalf of projects the Chairman knew a priori to be rubbish. He was never to be found, as we were, along with Coldstream and Hugh Willatt, the Secretary-General, penetrating the ...”

“... history. A similar model or map of culture is implicit in the work of historians in other fields: Michael Baxandall, for example, has explored the possible relation between cultural practices as different as painting, gauging barrels, and calligraphy, and Roger Chartier is concerned, like Greenblatt, with both practices and representations, and above all with ...”

“... 15 months later. We differed sharply over our tactics. Some of us – notably Colin Phipps and Michael Barnes – thought that we non-MPs should force the pace: that the way to produce a breakaway from the Parliamentary Labour Party was to make it clear to our old friends there that we intended to set up a separate social democratic party whether they ...”

“... exist in the work of Catholic or Anglo-Catholic writers like Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark and A.N. Wilson. The greater the distance from which human life is seen, the more like a certain kind of black comedy it tends to look. Updike has praised the ‘sublime hard-heartedness’ of Waugh’s fiction, and contrasted it favourably with the ‘claustrophobically ...”

“... of those with Christian backgrounds who remain uncertain of New Labour’s merits, such as Michael Meacher, an Anglican and ex-Bennite, or the Old Labour heirs to Eric Heffer, a staunch Anglo-Catholic, or Tony Benn, an agnostic who nonetheless argues that ‘the moral roots of socialism lie in religion’ and that ‘political agitation is groundless ...”

“... herd of Carlylean black beasts with bilious diatribe: ‘Model Prisons’ (in anticipation of Michael Howard), ‘Downing Street’ (it was currently being rebuilt – as a temple to ‘Redtape’, according to Carlyle), ‘Jesuitism’ (this was the period of the ‘Catholic Aggression’, wormwood to the Calvinist Scot), ‘Hudson’s Statue’ (a ...”

“... Still, there is only one staggering omission. He describes the genesis of physiology under Michael Foster but never mentions Adrian, Hodgkin or Huxley, all Nobel Laureates and masters of Trinity, who immediately after the war worked in the most prestigious biological department which pullulated with FRS. The greatest change in social life? Brooke is in ...”