“... Over recent years there have been sporadic disclosures of how MI6 really works, especially since Edward Heath made the foolish mistake of ordering MI6 into Britain’s own Irish backyard, where its methods were easy to watch. What Bloch and Fitzgerald have done is draw together all the threads of what has become privately and more or less publicly known ...”

“... gentlemen, I think we all fought a good fight …’ Trog (Wally Fawkes) was compounded by Edward Heath, who described a party political broadcast located in Macmillan’s country house, where the government’s record is assessed by its top men: And Harold said: ‘Well now, Rab, I think we’ve done very well, don’t you?’ And Rab ...”

“... liberties himself, Powell chose to betray his own party and plot with Harold Wilson to defeat Edward Heath. I visited Pentonville Prison in December, on a tour to mark the jail’s 175th anniversary. No phones, no laptops – instant isolation and unease. Pentonville was considered a model new prison when it was built in the 1840s – the idea that ...”

“... retail price maintenance, but when he saw how strongly it would be resisted he backed off. Edward Heath soon showed that he was made of sterner stuff by pushing through its abolition and, when he took over the EEC negotiations from Maudling, there was a clear increase in drive and energy. Nonetheless, Maudling’s instincts on Europe were wiser ...”

“... victory margin for the Tories in 1970 despite the party leader, and that he destroyed that leader, Edward Heath, in 1974, by calling for a Labour vote to be cast by all opponents of Britain joining the European Community. When there is a surprise result, as in the first case, and a marginal result, as in the second, numerous factors can be held to be ...”

“... was in power and was bringing forward a Race Relations Bill, to which the Conservatives, led by Edward Heath, were opposed. Powell had stood against Heath for the leadership in 1965, gaining the votes of only 15 MPs. But he was a member of the shadow cabinet, appointed (in ...”

“... had perfected the snake, the rat and the toad that he began work on designing the scab.In an Edward Thompsonian echo, Seumas Milne reminds us of the British tradition of police espionage by quoting from the constitution of the London Corresponding Society, drawn up in 1795: ‘Extreme zeal is often a cloak of treachery.’ Since well before the time of ...”

“... Harold Macmillan’s application for membership of the Community, then being masterminded by Edward Heath. Despite those critics, especially in the Labour Party, who dubbed supporters of entry ‘Eurofanatics’, there was nothing fanatical about my position then and nothing fanatical now. By 1962 there was overwhelming evidence that Britain simply ...”

“... Commonwealth as of little more than sentimental value. But there are those who suspect that, had Edward Heath shown more enthusiasm and a more comradely spirit at those Commonwealth Conferences over which he presided as premier, things might have turned out differently. Nevertheless, it is no small matter that, although wars between members of the ...”

“... party and the likely future prime minister, Shimon Peres. Yitzhak Rabin has gone one better than Edward Heath – he has brought out his book on ...”

“... in. He was chairman of Tory Action, which campaigned so successfully in 1974 and 1975 to remove Edward Heath as Tory leader and replace him with Thatcher. He even stood for Parliament himself. But he was, as the memo makes clear, deeply suspicious of anything which smacked of democracy. It threw up waverers, compromisers, ready phrases and flashing ...”

“... For his part, Attlee was invariably laconic save on clues in the Times crossword. More recently, Edward Heath never quite overcame his unease with the press, while Harold Wilson could never wholly hide the peculiar fascination which it held for him. His relations with the Lobby ranged from love affair to stormy divorce. James Callaghan lacked Wilson’s ...”

“... and the sympathetic attention he required. He wouldn’t even let himself be seen with his admirer Edward Heath lest anyone catch on to the fact that he could both paint the poor and be a Tory. In order to create the impression he wanted he lied a great deal (different lies to different people), which he clearly enjoyed. He lied not only about his friends ...”

“... the Community’s spokesmen, advocates or analysts had ever disguised its ambitions. In 1962, when Edward Heath was first negotiating terms for British membership, one of his French interlocutors – later a minister – made the point in words reminiscent of a British Army marching song. ‘We don’t know where we’re going,’ he said. ‘All we know ...”

“... a wood shaving’ is certainly writing down to his enervated subject. A few years ago Theroux took Edward Heath to task, in a review collected in Sunrise with Seamonsters, over the deathless prose of his book Places, that gilded nowhere in the world less or other than ‘pleasant’. Remarkable and depressing, then, to read in The Pillars of Hercules of ...”