“... stood eagerly in the prow as if waiting to strike land.On Any Questions on Radio 4 tonight are Roy Hattersley and Edward Heath, Janet Cohen and Jonathon Porritt. Neither Heath nor Hattersley is a particular favourite of mine but because no one on the panel is extreme in their ...”

“... the future of the Labour Party as an electoral force. Nevertheless, it is useful to be reminded by Roy Jenkins in the preface to a collection of his essays and speeches that he broke with Labour ‘not because I feared it could not be elected, but because, with its new policies, I did not want it to be elected’. In the 1979 Dimbleby Lecture, here ...”

“... Sunday Express as he was getting from the Government.’ Reginald Maudling, Alec Home and even Ted Heath appear among the intimates. At Home’s 80th birthday party, given by Rupert Murdoch, ‘who hardly knew Alec’, Junor finds himself among a mere 20 people and is pathetically grateful that Alec has done him ‘the extraordinary honour’ of inviting him ...”

“... teaching it to obey simple commands in French), and much about the comings and goings of Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher, Roy Jenkins, Prince Charles and the like – plenty of material here for a comparative study of the discourteous and the bibulous, with suggestions of an inverse correlation between the two. At one ...”

“... rebel. The split in the Labour Party over Europe was to be decisive. It led to the resignation of Roy Jenkins as Deputy Leader and to the breakdown of the old, controlling alliance on the centre-right of the party. The SDP, when it emerged ten years later, was the lineal descendant of the Labour rebellion. But dissent in the Conservative Party presented no ...”

“... like trains’), take up more space than dramatic development does. René’s girlfriend, Suchitra Roy, a filmmaker who, like Riya, has an intense relationship with New York City, suggests he has fixated on the Goldens because they represent ‘aspects of your own nature’, and he admits that he sublimates his feelings ‘into movie references’. These ...”

“... 1st earl of Iveagh, purchased Kenwood House, a neoclassical villa on the edge of Hampstead Heath and one of the finest surviving examples of the mature designs of Robert Adam. Two years later, Lord Iveagh died, bequeathing Kenwood to the nation, along with 63 Old Master and 18th-century British paintings from his own collection, including works by ...”

“... that she was a politician. She had survived a near death experience as education secretary in the Heath government, when her decision to scrap free milk in primary schools for children aged seven and over made her for a while the most unpopular politician in the country (‘Milksnatcher’). It had been a grisly time and had tested even her energy and ...”

“... chapter, several entertaining examples of such innovation, beginning with the description of Mr Heath by the Times as ‘a doorstep loser’, which, as he remarks, involved no allusion to any propensity on Mr Heath’s part to mislay doorsteps. He refers disparagingly to explanations of such innovatory uses by ‘orthodox ...”

“... 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 is that ...”

“... slightly smug later version. And there is something mildly provoking about his elaboration of the Roy Jenkins-style good life: Fiona and Jack, with their charming Gray’s Inn flat, their holidays in Meribel and ‘the cheaper sort of castle’, their interesting political discussions, their prosciutto and olives, their ‘warmed pain aux raisins from ...”

“... 1974, tripling its popular vote. Although tempted by the prospect of coalition with Edward Heath’s Conservatives (Labour had emerged as the largest party, but without an overall majority), Thorpe was persuaded by his parliamentary party not to do a deal without a guarantee of electoral reform. He left his successors good cause to credit him with ...”

“... Labour leader, Harold Wilson. The ‘warm-up’ was a brilliant speech by the MP for Stechford, Roy Jenkins, who described his leader as ‘the greatest Parliamentarian of his generation’. The acclamation for Wilson as he rose to speak, diminutive behind a huge lectern, was deafening. I noticed that he had few notes – perhaps one sheet of paper with a ...”

“... Rothschilds before rising through the ranks of the Gaullist administration. A year later, Edward Heath succeeded Wilson, heading a Conservative government in a time of decolonisation. Unlike any other British prime minister of the postwar epoch, Heath was overwhelmingly oriented to Europe, where he had fought during the ...”

“... medieval wall-paintings. It’s an immensely appealing place, not unlike Lead in Yorkshire or Heath near Ludlow. Good graves on the north side, some for a family called Secker who seem to live in the manor house across the field, a romantic rambling house that looks unrestored and has oddly in its grounds an ornate seaside-looking Edwardian clock ...”