“... was shut to him. Naturally, James was very right-wing. He’d been a disciple, he still boasts, of George Kennedy Young, an MI6 agent who became deputy chairman of Kleinwort Benson. James describes Young as ‘a brave man’ who ‘knew the difference between good and evil’. In fact, Young was a racist of a pretty poisonous variety who never let his business ...”

“... alternative to work, was quickly eradicated. And there was a new iteration under David Cameron and George Osborne, in the form of austerity. The hypothesis of ‘expansionary fiscal contraction’, touted by Osbornites during the first years of the coalition government, is that cuts to public spending can lead to economic growth, by creating more opportunities ...”

“... country pastimes: shooting, riding and adultery. Her mother Stella was the daughter of Viscount Ridley, Lord Salisbury’s Home Secretary. It was the women who brought panache to the family: Stella used to travel to Jamaica by banana boat with her friend Princess Marie-Louise and an aunt played the harp at Lenin’s funeral. When David was ten her ...”

“... heir. Both the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, and the Bishop of London, Nicholas Ridley, openly and precisely said that both Mary and Elizabeth were bastards. Mary’s remarkable initial success came from single-mindedly stressing the one asset she possessed: bastard or no bastard, she was flesh of Henry VIII’s flesh. What she did not ...”

“... parties and trade-union activists, we shall continue to be governed by Mrs Thatcher, Nicholas Ridley and John Major. David Marquand insists on a few truisms, but is decently cautious about what they imply. He fears the effects of selfishness and moral anarchy. As he says, a society which degenerates into a Hobbesian war of all against all is no society at ...”

“... for their Protestant convictions between 1555 and 1558. Some of those who died – Latimer, Ridley, Cranmer – were high-profile victims, learned men and convinced Protestants who were executed after show trials. Others were hardly heard of outside their own parishes and perhaps barely understood what they were dying for. An Essex servant ...”

“... careers were too long for any one writer to encompass comprehensively; Charles James Fox and Lloyd George because their passion to rule and their ruling passions are so hard to reconcile; and the younger Pitt and Baldwin because the weight of the times nearly suffocates the life. Most of these difficulties lie in wait for the intending biographer of ...”

“... moral concern – not in this day and age. The names of Lawson, Brittan, Hurd, Fowler, Chalker and Ridley were produced – all divorced. Palmerston, Asquith and Lloyd George were cited as testimony to the morality of previous days and ages. Many were the cautions against hypocrisy. Mr Parkinson finally resigned on the ...”

“... but before persecution cometh do goe backe’. And in the bitterness of his imprisonment, Nicholas Ridley came to believe that the Edwardine reformation had never in fact penetrated the hearts even of the nation’s political elites, much less the common people: ‘it may be truly sayd of them,’ he wrote, as of the most part of the Clergy, of ...”

“... Falkland’. 23 January (?) 1765: Byron takes formal possession of all the islands in the name of George III. On his voyage no settlement was left behind, though the surgeon of the Tamar planted a garden ‘with many esculent vegetables... for the benefit of those who hereafter come to this place’. 20 July 1765: decision made to send out another expedition ...”

“... tenant with too colourful a professional life; Patrick Nicholls, suspected drunk driver; Nicholas Ridley, too loquacious an advocate of anti-German feeling; and Mrs Edwina Currie (‘most of the egg production in this country is, sadly, now infected with salmonella’). Then there is the long line of sex-scandal casualties: Cecil Parkinson, Tim Yeo, David ...”

“... more leeway with risky material. It set a marker in 1977 by airing a stand-up comedy special with George Carlin. For the most part it was pretty safe material. Towards the end, a warning came up on the screen: ‘The final segment of Mr Carlin’s performance contains especially controversial language, please consider whether you wish to continue ...”