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“... of the evidence presented to the Hutton Inquiry, it is entirely believable that MI6 helped 10 Downing Street to persuade the British public that there was a case for war, just as the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon was doing in the United States. After all, John Scarlett, the present chairman of the Joint ...”

“... who range from newspaper editors to political historians, it may make very little difference. As John Kenneth Galbraith has observed, changing the top man in important business corporations rarely affects the price of their shares on the market. A rapid glance at the history of the USA also suggests scepticism about the impact of individual leaders. That ...”

“... the casualty of the Falklands War, although if blame is to be allocated, I would place it on Sir John Nott, the Secretary of State for Defence, whose policy of running down the Royal Navy (with Mrs Thatcher’s support) gave the Junta the signal it sought to embark on a bit of smash and grab. I was on the platform at the sensational meeting of the ...”

“... as Heseltine’s eyes and ears. Nor were they rewarded for their work. When he was invited into John Major’s government, after gracefully conceding defeat in the second leadership ballot, Heseltine should have made ministerial jobs for Mates and Hampson absolute conditions of his return. He should have done the same even if privately he thought them ...”

“... leaders were being hounded for instant comment. Crucially, Labour’s Defence Spokesman, John Silkin, went onto the important World at One radio programme, and seemed to commit the Opposition to a belligerent reaction. Uncharacteristically, I leapt to my telephone to ask what was going on, and was calmed down by Anne Carleton, his long-term personal ...”

“... clear he has ambition, beyond making a point of having got where he’s got. His residence in 10 Downing Street represents a personal triumph, which he will want to prolong as long as possible, by whatever means possible. It is a reflection on Britain’s constitution that it is being pushed to its limit by a man who has no vision of the nation beyond his ...”

“... It was as if Len Murray had decided to have a go at politics and had suddenly been propelled into Downing Street. Except that Hawke is no Len Murray. Mr Murray, for all his sound qualities, presents the air of a loser, a man who has suffered and expects things to get worse. Hawke, with his snappy suits and elaborate hair-do, his reputation as a conqueror of ...”

“... not just on providing it but on being seen to do so. Since the 1760s, popular tribunes like John Wilkes and John Cartwright had been changing the terms of debate by demanding more press freedom and more political engagement with the people. They claimed that the public interest could be defined and defended only if ...”

“... boasted about their powerful contacts in the Tory Party and the Government. Greer even mentioned John Major as ‘a close friend’. The programme-makers arranged further such meetings, one in a Spanish castle, to which Greer was asked to invite his contacts. Greer’s network of helpful politicians was about to be exposed when Central Television and its new ...”

“... leisured families still clambered in profusion around the House of Commons and the Cabinet. At 10 Downing Street Lord Salisbury promoted his relations so vigorously that his administration became known as the ‘Hotel Cecil’, and the apple of his eye was undoubtedly his nephew, Arthur Balfour. A delicate and bookish young man, Balfour was at first written ...”

“... is up to his successor to keep on with the tablets.’ That successor, in October 1993, was still John Smith; so it was a pre-Blair perspective that led me to conclude: ‘If a “labour party” did not exist, it would not be necessary to invent it. But a social democratic party known as the Labour Party, with an unstitched leadership, is more necessary than ...”

“... a devastating sort as well. It is not so long ago, indeed, that I experienced a sharp regret that John Carey’s unstinted praise of work that I had done had also provided the occasion for his fierce underestimation of work by a friend and countryman of mine. Still, it is inevitable that this kind of complication enter into the relations between poets and ...”

“... and Hadden, however, argue that the first choice is preferable, and might now be realisable. The Downing Street Declaration and the stalemate of the peace process could bring about a novel sort of civic-national administration: a ‘Swiss’ governance of what would (in relation to the traditional ethno-national alternatives) effectively become a no man’s ...”

“... voiced dissent was in June 1966, following substantial political pressure. In a statement from Downing Street, which was later repeated in the House of Commons, he announced ‘with regret that United States aircraft have attacked North Vietnamese targets touching on the populated areas of Hanoi and Haiphong,’ and that ‘we must dissociate ourselves ...”

“... leader of the nation in arms (remember the Falklands?), and the most long-serving occupant of 10 Downing Street this century, the Prime Minister has in many quarters displaced the monarchy as the most potent symbol of national identity. ‘No wonder,’ she has reputedly remarked of the Windsors, ‘they stand on ceremony: what else have they got?’ Nor has ...”