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“... into our antique political culture than a party leadership contest. I remember talking with Robin Cook just as the Blair bandwagon began to assume unstoppable proportions. Cook had outfought and out-performed every other Labour contender by a mile; he was cleverer, more experienced, funnier. And yet what he was having to read in the press was an ...”

“... circulation declined, notwithstanding its 1964 relaunch as the Sun, complete with the new Wilson-era slogan: ‘Born of the age we live in!’ When IPC finally decided to sell the Sun the circulation had fallen from 1.5m to 650,000 copies. After the print unions refused to discuss Robert Maxwell’s offer for the paper, Murdoch stepped in. ‘I am ...”

“... A sugar plantation with its mill, and its businesslike organisation and rhythms of work, bore, as Robin Blackburn points out, a clear resemblance to the factory that emerged with the Industrial Revolution; and its labour force was ‘more intensively exploited than any group of this size in history’. By a kind of poetic justice, of the three commodities ...”

“... magic circle of lobby men, lunching with him at St Stephen’s Club once a week. He saw Harold Wilson every week too, with the other members of the ‘White Commonwealth’, as the handpicked political editors were then called. Yet he did not grow to love or respect these great men. On the contrary, in his book he portrays most of the prime ministers he ...”

“... I am personally more attracted by Susan Forward’s modestly presented case-histories than by Robin Fox’s pretentious fantasies, but there is more meat for discussion in the latter’s argument, so let us start there. Once, long ago, Robin Fox was trained as a British social anthropologist. He has published two ...”

“... 16, or 16 and a half, and still at school when I read in the papers that a black American, Jimmy Wilson, had been sentenced to death for stealing a dollar. I can still recall that moment of deep shock. We couldn’t believe it. Even if he’d stolen a million, executing him was a bit much. So I got a few schoolfriends together, and said to them: ‘We ...”

“... government: ‘Bollocks, Cohen. What about the landmines?’ What about the landmines? On 12 May Robin Cook announced the Government’s first leftward shift. Labour would abandon Tory foreign policy, whose futile cynicism had been dissected in the Arms-to-Iraq inquiry. Britain’s relations with the rest of the world would now have ‘an ethical ...”

“... replication of that TV programme’s famous ‘balance’, with the ponderously sober ‘Robin’ McNeil, ‘Jim’ Lehrer and ‘Charlene’ Hunter-Gault studiously examining both sides of the slavery question, Hitler and the Crucifixion), of most academics and of all TV networks, of the rich and the famous, of the military, of Israel, of ...”

“... a heckler shouted ‘nigger lover’ at him, he retorted angrily that he was no such thing. Harold Wilson, the new Labour Prime Minister, denounced the young MP from Smethwick as a ‘Parliamentary leper’, and before long Griffiths was drowned in the full Labour tide of 1966. But even before the 1966 election, the Labour Party had turned the retreat at ...”

“... first published in 1983, is in a different class altogether, as are the essays edited by Theodore Wilson. The most comprehensive is of course the big encyclopedia, which in addition to all the alphabetical facts contains a choice store of those super-facts to which browsers in good reference works become wholly addicted. We learn, for example, that Theodor ...”

“... using the concealer. This was 1987, one of those annoying eras of ‘fresh-faced beauty’ (think Robin Wright in The Princess Bride: long blonde hair, perfect skin). Spots were not allowed. Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink (1986) wore encouragingly thick make-up, and looked miserable, which gave me hope, but no matter how much I squinted I couldn’t see any ...”

“... about the architecture of such notorious concretised dark stars as London’s Thamesmead and Robin Hood Gardens, or Sheffield’s Park Hill: he has been a passionate proselytiser. Thamesmead’s isolation and the GLC’s policy of dumping tenants on the estate may have been a strong impetus to downward mobility, but nothing should detract from the fact ...”

“... identity is not always so bullishly direct as Rogers makes out. In The Island Race,* Kathleen Wilson has recently reminded us that national identities are always multiple, contested, contradictory and mutable, not to mention racialised and gendered. Had Rogers written his book in this spirit, he would probably have noted that, since the 18th century ...”

“... and swarthy, a Jew tormented by self-loathing’ (voiced undoubtedly by a frantically guttural Robin Williams) scribbling The Communist Manifesto at his desk while a chorus of comically evil creditors sing a hummy hymn to capitalism, ‘We’ve got nothing to lose but our claims.’ Oh, what an exciting new century we have to look forward to. Wheen wants ...”

“... is best remembered now for the somewhat suspect boom he unleashed as chancellor in 1962-64. Harold Wilson, worried that the Tories led by Maudling might be unbeatable, always claimed that the 1967 devaluation was the ultimate result of Maudling’s irresponsible stimulus of the economy – and the mud stuck. In fact, this was unfair in that it never addressed ...”