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“... in power is scathing, showing the failure to disrupt the pattern of southern capture and control. Ramsay MacDonald’s chancellor, Philip Snowden, was one of several senior northerners in the fragile interwar Labour governments. He bought a ‘big house’ in Surrey and was so ‘awestruck’ by the Bank of England that he agreed to ‘balance the books on ...”

“... turn is sometimes justified by a recourse to non-facts. He tells Ronald Butt that, among others, Ramsay MacDonald and Herbert Morrison were Marxists: a good debating-point, but wrong. Indeed, one of the many striking things about the diaries is how often Labour leaders attempt to validate their opinions by such a recourse to the Party’s history; and how ...”

“... than anyone else – with the result that the Labour Party now has its first leader since Ramsay MacDonald with no experience of government at all. He is also the first party leader to have made his career entirely in the world of television and opinion polls and intensive press analysis of the who and how of politics rather than the what and why. As ...”

“... great deal of light on the possibilities of reviving written Scots is cast by the festschrift for David Murison, Scotland and the Lowland Tongue. The collection contains a number of pieces of very high quality, which is perhaps not surprising, since few people would want to present anything but their most respectable work to Murison, the wittiest of ...”

“... unerring as it clearly is, he ceases to be one, as do his womenfolk and the Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, ‘an unimpressive man; eyes disappointing; rather heavy; middle-class; sunk; grumpy; self-important; wore a black waistcoat’. They all called each other Van, Bogey, Ramsay, Eadie, across the table; engaged ...”

“... It was a remarkable time at the Slade – his other classmates included Paul Nash, Ben Nicholson, David Bomberg and William Roberts – and a revolutionary moment in British art. Even to express support for Roger Fry’s Post-Impressionist exhibitions was daring and radical. Nevinson, having seen a contemporary art show in Venice, knew he was ‘bored with ...”

“... thoroughly effective leader of his party and an outstanding prime minister. Having reacted against Ramsay Mac-Donald, the argument runs, Labour stood in need of a personality who would put party above self, and Attlee fitted the bill. Yet in his quiet fashion he was skilful in managing the Party and holding it together. Hence Labour’s victory in the General ...”

“... cook. Not just how to cook a mushroom risotto like Jamie Oliver or Nigella Lawson or Gordon Ramsay or Anthony Bourdain, but what it’s like to be Jamie or Nigella or Gordon or Tony: Happy Days with the Naked Chef, How to be a Domestic Goddess, In the Heat of the Kitchen, Kitchen Confidential. And then – as if we need to know still more – there are ...”

“... a few on the far right the coming of war was itself a defeat. One Tory MP, Captain Archibald Ramsay, was so nakedly Teutophile and antisemitic that he was interned in 1940 along with Oswald Mosley. Another fascisant MP, Sir Arnold Wilson, chose expiation by enlisting in the RAF. Having somewhat surprisingly been accepted as a tail-gunner at the age of ...”

“... bookshop, to see how thoroughly and interestingly the French cover the field. One new series, Ramsay Poche Cinéma, already has about seventy strong titles, including many judiciously chosen reprints. Perhaps Faber or Cambridge will pick up Bogdanovich’s Fritz Lang in America or Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Dreyer in Double Reflection, Rossellini’s ...”

“... chose to go to Berne to attend a convention of European socialists, whose delegates included Ramsay MacDonald and Arthur Henderson, and which produced nothing. The convention was designed as a continuation of the regular prewar gatherings of the Socialist International, at which various factions had squabbled and bickered before declaring their ...”

“... first-class people to semi-starvation.’ He had in mind the treatment of people like his father, David, who, as Bevan put it, was ‘choked to death’ by pneumoconiosis (a lung condition caused by long-term inhalation of coal dust) but received no compensation since the condition wasn’t classified as an industrial disease under the Workmen’s ...”

“... examining the origins of the Labour Party, entwined with the achievements of Keir Hardie and Ramsay McDonald, and appraising the fate of the New Liberalism, as it unfolded in the era of Asquith and Lloyd George, had served to open their minds to the historic frailty as well as the inherent strength of Labour’s position. In looking at the displacement ...”

“... enjoyed the confidence of prime ministers. He was in the private sitting room of Number Ten when Ramsay MacDonald returned from the palace on resigning. He belonged to Chamberlain’s magic circle of lobby men, lunching with him at St Stephen’s Club once a week. He saw Harold Wilson every week too, with the other members of the ‘White Commonwealth’, as ...”

“... The early chapters of Olivier’s Confessions are written in Dickensian pastiche, even borrowing David Copperfield’s opening speculation whether he would turn out the hero of his own life story. The object of this is to characterise the young Olivier as a Dickens child, a version of David, and his father, the widowed ...”