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“... see what’s new in the world. The news according to Reuters, the Associated Press and the other major news organisations is always dreadful: dispossessed refugees with nowhere to go; political killings which will remain unpunished; reports from Africa where the ghastly mix of war and famine daily claims more victims. It’s a minute-by-minute stream of ...”

“... the overseas intelligence service, also ensures them a significant place in government. In 1995, John Major estimated that the Foreign Office received 40,000 pieces of secret intelligence a year, around 25,000 of them from GCHQ and 15,000 from the SIS. The volume of material is so great that it requires a separate secretariat and committee, the Joint ...”

“... party now hopes to continue for a second. R.I.P. progressive taxation. When, on the other hand, John Major thinks of Englishness, he thinks of cricket: ‘Fifty years on from now, Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers’ etc etc. These are probably ...”

“... arrogant display of budget that speaks of royal visitations, the finish of the London Marathon, or John Major on walkabout, prospecting for inner-city blight. But on this unearned, mint morning, the fuss is all about real royalty, indigenous royalty: one of our local princes of darkness, a cashmere colonel, is about to be boxed. A mob of expectant ...”

“... than Labour – they don’t have to fear accusations of defeatism and a lack of patriotism. John Major continued the trend in the 1990s even as the navy argued vigorously for two new fleet carriers to replace the three small Invincible-class ships.This was effected under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and, after many delays and much cost ...”

“... smelling powerfully of brandy. Seeing I was a bit dejected, Bruce said he would plug me with John Major and David (Young) ... I went to Brooks’s, lost £150 and my appetite waned. Returned here and ate a toasted bun, first food since a banana at 1.30. In the tea room I had a chat with Fallon, a nice cool whip. I complained about all this ...”

“... government of Britain, it is because the SDP showed the way. As for the Conservative Party, John Major will certainly move it back onto the middle ground. In the Limehouse Declaration we said that we wanted ‘to create an open, classless and more equal society, one which rejects ugly prejudices based on sex, race or religion’. This required, we ...”

“... Cheered on by the Tory faithful, John Major recently dismissed as ‘claptrap’ a letter signed by 500 university teachers of English attacking the proposed revisions to the National Curriculum. The academics were accused – falsely, I believe – of wanting to undermine the teaching of Shakespeare. A few months earlier, the Education Secretary John Patten sent back an official report on English in schools with the comment that 15-year-olds perhaps ought to be made to study the ‘great tradition of the novel ...”

“... from Heath in 1975 and Heseltine to knock out Thatcher in 1990, to the ultimate advantage of Major. It signalled a change not just in the rules but in the code. Neither Heath nor Thatcher went quietly: neither of them played the game. For 15 years, Heath was to keep up an unremitting campaign, in defence of his own record and in criticism (increasingly ...”

“... Marxists have discovered, is pride in knowing your place and respecting your superiors. John Osborne’s autobiography A Better Class of Person (1981) is a sustained assault on that attitude in general and his mother in particular. It is no accident that, as Taylor quotes John Vincent saying, Margaret Thatcher was ...”

“... as a bit too cuddly and open, and makes you long for the days of secrecy and high adventure before John Major passed the 1994 Intelligence Services Act, which not only publicly acknowledged the existence of SIS for the first time, to absolutely no one’s surprise, but also made it subject to Parliamentary oversight. Or it may be that it strikes you as a ...”

“... until her speech had been triumphantly delivered. If is impossible to imagine a Kinnock, Smith or Major having the energy, determination and professional confidence to carry this sort of thing off. Similarly, she has now produced a book which, whatever its bias and dishonesties, is far, far beyond the normal politician’s memoirs in its thoroughness and ...”

“... cards. By the 1980s this was causing difficulties for social scientists and in 1984 the ESRC asked John Bynner to investigate; he recommended that the cohort data be more widely advertised, and transcribed into electronic formats. In the 1990s the data were amalgamated and digitised at the University of Essex. Economists and social researchers from all over ...”

“... John Stuart Mill labelled the Conservatives ‘the stupid party’. They have certainly been stupid since 1997, and one wonders if their stupidity will persist. But a related and more interesting question is: ‘Are the Conservatives any longer a serious party?’ A serious party can be one of two things. It can, like the Greens, be concerned with only one issue or one group of issues ...”

“... in 2000, Under Thatcher . . . they got drunk on the power she let them wield and then they tore Major to shreds, in part with our complicity. Also, for pragmatic reasons, we entered into a whole series of basically dishonest relationships with them and now they realised that. They realised that they actually have less power than they did and they see us as ...”