“... suggest the many approaches historians of women can appropriate from other areas of history. Margaret Forster’s is the most conventional of the four. Her subtitle is misleading: her thoughtful and interesting book is not a sociological analysis of rank-and-file provincial feminists, but collects together short biographies of eight well-known women who ...”

“... more interesting phenomenon, but is the wording of her dedications interesting or original? ‘To Margaret Rutherford, in admiration’: I share the admiration for Margaret Rutherford, but not the admiration for this as a dedication. There can be no intrinsic objection to such a dedication as Thomas Moore’s, of Lalla ...”

“... Bennite Left under New Labour underlines the point: stalwarts from the early 1980s – Tony Banks, Margaret Beckett, Jeremy Corbyn, Michael Meacher, Clare Short, Gavin Strang – have been given only walk-on roles in the Cabinet, while younger recruits to Benn’s Campaign Group, such as Paul Boateng and Dawn Primarolo, have not been allowed to speak in their ...”

“... where she awed the Partisan Review crowd, became friends with New York intellectuals like Dwight Macdonald, and charmed countless literary lights as the perfect ‘Good European’ (though Delmore Schwartz once dismissed her as ‘that Weimar Republic flapper’). In the last decade of her life, her commentaries on contemporary political issues, uncommonly ...”

“... I bet he did). It contains an account of the meeting between Lochiel and Charles Edward at MacDonald of Boradale’s. Lochiel argued long and hard to dissuade the Chevalier, but when he failed, he said: ‘I’ll share the fate of my prince; and so shall every man over whom nature or fortune have given me power.’ The quotation from The Wealth of ...”

“... Nicolson won the seat of West Leicester for National Labour, the rump that had followed Ramsay MacDonald after the Labour split of 1931. It was at the same election that Channon stepped into what was for the 20th century a most unusual pocket borough. Lord Elveden was the MP for Southend from 1918 until he became earl of Iveagh in 1927; his wife took over ...”

“... and his domination of economic policy remind one alarmingly of the relationship between Ramsay MacDonald and Philip Snowden in 1931: between a Prime Minister who senses that there is probably a better alternative but who lacks the authority or self-confidence to choose it and a Chancellor of formidable personality who is a rigidly orthodox practitioner of ...”

“... to his programmatic radicalism. One other figure who flits through this early period is Ramsay MacDonald, already dreaming of being prime minister while running a ‘Fellowship House’ in Doughty Street in Bloomsbury. Ellis left London for a medical practice in Blackburn in 1887, and managed to survive the death of his mother (she died as he was reading ...”

“... so often accompanies that search.’ Another piece, this one by Leone and her associate Jennifer Macdonald called Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down, endeavours ‘to combine the public and private needs of recording loss. In the space of a child’s sandbox, Ashes, Ashes offers the viewer a fragile and indecipherable moment: a braille text in sand that contains ...”

“... towards its implementation.Here the postwar Conservative Party can be seen taking shape. Alexander Macdonald, a union leader, claimed in 1879 that Disraeli’s government had done more for the working class in five years than the Liberals had in fifty. And a large part of the foundations of social security and public health legislation had been laid by Neville ...”

“... And the Pre-Raphaelite line continues, right the way up to The Blue Flower, via George MacDonald, whose Phantastes inspired generations of grot-and-goblin writers, and who was the translator of the Hymns to the Night. In fact, MacDonald was the only English-speaking writer who ‘really understood’ Novalis, as ...”

“... compromise or flattery (two supremely silly treatments). And there have been undressed dolls too. Margaret Fuller, the pioneer American feminist, wrote that ‘since Adam, there has been none that approached nearer fitness to stand up before God and angels in the naked majesty of manhood than Robert Burns.’ Catherine Carswell wrote a brave, Lawrentian ...”

“... a credible commitment to moderation, was halted – but by the unions themselves, as much as by Margaret Thatcher. It has given us an economy in which organised labour has very little real corporate power. This is a situation without parallel in any other European state. In different ways, unions in France, Germany and Italy carry a good deal more clout ...”

“... the writer working and sleeping in the house alone. We spoke on the phone sometimes about Dwight MacDonald and essayists he knew and loved. And one time we had a conversation by satellite at the Edinburgh Book Festival. Norman had a way of delighting audiences and he worked them, playing the old roué, then next minute the fierce political ...”

“... and tradition, was well poised to profit from discontent.In 1973, the left-wing nationalist Margo MacDonald triumphed in the Govan by-election, refreshing the idea that an SNP challenge was possible in Labour’s industrial heartlands. But the party’s big steps forward came in the two general elections of 1974. In February the SNP won seven seats with 22 ...”