“... of those who wished it so. They had lived through what complacent historians in the West like John Lewis Gaddis called the ‘Long Peace’ of postwar Europe, but which for them was an unbroken long war of fifty years, starting with the Soviet invasion of the Baltic states in August 1939, before Hitler attacked Poland, and ending only with the fall of the ...”

“... Kevin Sharpe’s Personal Rule of Charles I, Conrad Russell’s Fall of the British Monarchies and John Morrill’s Nature of the English Revolution all represent distinct standpoints, but certain common features continue to stand out. Rejecting both constitutional explanations of the Caroline crisis, and class interpretations of the Civil War, these histories ...”

“... London dispatched no less a figure than the chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Sir John Harding. Within a month of his arrival in 1955, he told the cabinet with brutal candour that if self-determination was ruled out, ‘a regime of military government must be established and the country run indefinitely as a police state.’ He was as good as ...”

“... betting shop in Tufnell Park. Two things​ happened to change this. The first was the decision of John Major’s government to introduce a national lottery in 1994. At a stroke it became impossible for the government to maintain its position that gambling should not be stimulated by advertising, since it was now determined to advertise its own product. The ...”

“... it was very reassuring but also a bit ominous.’The Irish Sea: ‘Fish don’t do borders’ (John Lynch, a fisherman, quoted in the Irish Times, 14 December 2018).Jeremy Corbyn: ‘Delusional’ (Irish Independent, 12 December 2018). ‘The fact that there has been no leadership from Corbyn on Brexit will be something the party and the country may rue ...”

“... Hong Kong. A clever scholarship boy of Irish ancestry who grew up in West London, he shares with John Major a modest show-business background – his father published a pop hit, ‘She Wears Red Feathers and a Hooly Hooly Skirt’. ‘We were low-to-lower middle class. I can describe these gradations with laserlike accuracy,’ Patten told his New Yorker ...”

“... Saif al-Islam emerged within the regime. It was the fashion some years ago in circles close to the Blair government – in the media, principally, and among academics – to talk up Saif al-Islam’s commitment to reform and it is the fashion now to heap opprobrium on him as his awful father’s son. Neither judgment is accurate, both are self-serving. Saif ...”

“... to a halt in a fraction of a second was subjected to market shocks that had no market solution. Blair’s government had already intervened to slow down the switch from coal to gas; in 2002 it had little choice but to bail out British Energy, the private company that owned the nuclear stations. And there was a deeper, less visible problem. Neta was ...”

“... states such as Ukraine have no choice but to submit to the nearest great power, has run its course.John Mearsheimer’s argument of recent weeks that what we are seeing played out is ‘not imperialism [but] great-power politics’ will strike many as a distinction without a difference. Imperial history has far more to teach us than our decaying Atlantic ...”

“... what might be called spin-doctorates of the equerry. Van Rompuy was never a ruler in the sense Blair and Obama were, and van Middelaar never enjoyed the power of Powell and Rhodes. He is, on the other hand, incomparably more intelligent and literate, so Alarums and Excursions is a superior exercise in the genre, without need for chest-beating typical of ...”

“... and the idea of the fire brigade as a last line of defence. But that began to change during the Blair era and there has been a flurry of reductions in the fire service. ‘Knightsbridge Fire Station has closed,’ Matt Wrack told me. ‘Kensington Fire Station has lost a fire engine. Half the fire cover within four miles of Grenfell Tower has gone in the ...”