Search Results

“... At that point the bemused reader sees that among the names flashing past are those of Harold Wilson, Peter Hain, Jeremy Thorpe etc, who were supposed to be the targets of the ‘South African connection’. There the book ends, the author still asserting fiercely that justice has not been done to him. He is quite sure what ‘justice’ would ...”

“... another female writer. When he was 90, he gave me a birthday present of the Memoirs of Harriette Wilson, the Regency courtesan. This is a work which he had fathomed that I might want to read. I had wanted to. But there was no communion here between an older man’s prurience and my own. I think of Harriette’s autobiography (rumoured to have been written by ...”

“... year, will focus mainly on British politics, with particular attention to the achievements of Sir Harold Wilson. The present compilation deals with every subject but that. There is plenty to be going on with, although perhaps not quite as much as Levin thinks. ‘I am afraid,’ says Levin, ‘that I have a very great deal to ...”

“... Foot, and the New Statesman, under Paul Johnson. It was a different world. In those distant days, Harold Wilson was the Prime Minister. He was being assailed by ‘left-wingers’, people like me, for being too subservient to the United States Government, with particular reference to the American war in Vietnam: the same complaint was addressed to other ...”

“... Soviet agents, peaking with the claim, assiduously peddled for many years by elements in MI5, that Harold Wilson was or had been in the pay of the Soviets. In 1986 we learned from Spycatcher, the memoirs of a senior MI5 official Peter Wright, that a secret file on Wilson, labelled the Henry Worthington file was kept in ...”

“... Parliamentary Private Secretary, and had a ringside seat which enabled me to witness how berserk Harold Wilson, as Prime Minister, would go about leaks. I suspect this is in the nature of prime ministers, particularly those who live in Number Ten – Harold was much better the second time round in 1974/76, when Mary ...”

“... In 1964, Harold Wilson described the record of the (outgoing) Conservative government as ‘13 wasted years’. If the present Parliament lasts its full term – as seems likely – the electorate will be asked to pass judgment on 13 years of Labour rule. Voters today seem to have the same view of Labour as Wilson had of the Tories all those years ago ...”

“... had a little bit of success, and would have done more if it hadn’t been for bankers or, as Harold Wilson used to call his hidden enemies, “speculators”.’ Only Tony Benn, even as he was signing papers in the red dispatch boxes, travelling round in chauffeur-driven limousines and dining at Lockets, began to realise that he was playing a lead ...”

“... mention the National Health Service; and he may have belonged to the MI5 set which believed that Harold Wilson was a Soviet spy. He approached his actor son-in-law in search of information about theatrical subversives. Jago’s study is competent and fluent – prone to such smooth sentences as ‘The greatest irony is that it was to George ...”

“... his book – written to accompany the Channel 4 series of the same name – with the euphoria of Harold Wilson’s victory in 1964. He ends in 1981 with the ‘drying-out of the wets’ by Mrs Thatcher in her autumn reshuffle. The underlying theme, if only a whisper in the reader’s ear, is plain enough: the erosion of the post-war state, the collapse ...”

“... cannot forgive for conjuring Lord Home out of a hat in 1963. Also striking is his dislike of Harold Wilson, who is, broadly speaking, depicted as having debauched British politics by an almost singular lack of principle. Indeed, in his account, not the least benign consequence of a Tory victory in 1964 is that the British people would have been ...”

“... the roller-coaster nature of its affections. During the sharp conflicts of twenty-five years ago, Harold Wilson was not a newspaper hero in his dealings with Hugh Gaitskell. But after Gaitskell’s death, a single speech on the white heat of the technological revolution transformed his reputation. As Prime Minister, from 1964, he enjoyed complete ...”

“... survived Eisenhower’s explicit rejection of a ‘special’ relationship, was understandable. Harold Macmillan had no such excuse. Dismayed by Churchill’s change of front on Europe when he became prime minister, Macmillan had almost resigned from the Cabinet in 1952. Yet although, after the Suez débâcle, Eisenhower, Dulles and Adenauer had all thought ...”

“... He denies any particular bias against Labour governments, and is sorry to have fallen out with Harold Wilson (who later expressed sadness that he hadn’t known Pincher was a fellow Yorkshireman, telling him: ‘It would have made a difference, you know’). But while it may be true that he needled Tory as well as Labour administrations, provoking ...”

“... to have unseated the Conservatives in such a way as to force a rethink upon them were Attlee and Wilson. Attlee was in conventional terms well to the left of the centre, and in point of his electoral programme hardly less so. (Still, at the 1945 Labour Party Conference, Ernest Bevin came raging up to those, including Ian Mikardo and oddly enough James ...”