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“... all the way back to the beginning. Back to a country that neither of us would recognise, probably. Britain, 1973.’ Sophie’s presence is barely felt again until the end of the novel, when she pops up and says to poor Patrick, a man clearly possessed of the proverbial patience of a saint, who has listened to her for 400 pages without a peep: ‘All ...”

“... left-wing Marxist retreat into the 19th century in a similar search, was not wholly irrational. Britain’s economic performance since the war has been much inferior to that of our competitors. British post-war governments, like all other governments, made many mistakes. What is now known as supply-side economics was ignored by the Government in the ...”

“... The intention is admirable: bold men and ingenious machinery have tapped oil reserves which keep Britain solvent. The story looks promising: the bold men and the ingenious machinery are sometimes rocked by gales and pounded by hostile seas – a classic man v. the elements situation – and in Alvarez we have a high-quality writer on hand to make it all ...”

“... of belief, feeling, policy, legislation and action exemplified by the Conservative Party in Britain and a main part of the Republican Party in the United States, a political tradition that has evolved and contains diversity’. Honderich adds that ‘that is no adequate account or definition of the subject’, but that it is good enough to start ...”

“... and Glasgow came a torrent of newsprint that set the popular tone for the last days of imperial Britain, the ‘second Elizabethan age’ that was half-thrilled and half-terrified by Britain’s endeavours to build its own hydrogen bombs and jet airliners, worried about what the Russians were up to, and comforted by the ...”

“... of them.’ Orders were also given to burn the buildings and bodies. The massacre is described by Ian Campbell in Holy War, in horrific detail. In order to hide the extent of the killing, most of the victims were taken from the monastery in trucks. They were shot, mainly with machine guns, and buried where they fell in mass graves. Those who refused to get ...”

“... electricity from oil are self-evidently a ludicrous way of deciding how large a coal industry Britain needs – or even of deciding who is to decide. But just as the Falklands War was an indictment of a diplomacy which had never moved fast and flexibly enough, so the miners’ strike of 1984-5 was an indictment of an industrial and political system which ...”

“... have a giant inflatable banana in its collections or it would have been included in I Object: Ian Hislop’s Search for Dissent (until 20 January 2019) as Hislop’s personal contribution. In May 1989 Sonia Sutcliffe, wife of the Yorkshire Ripper, was awarded record-breaking libel damages of £600,000 against Private Eye. Standing outside the Royal Courts ...”

“... site when, according to BAA, development elsewhere will in any case be needed? Unfortunately, Britain has long lacked a sensible transport or location policy, something for which successive governments are far more culpable than BAA. But if there is one place where further development would be highly damaging it is West London. At the same time, East ...”

“... until economic troubles and deflation, the sacking of a third of his Cabinet, the failure of Britain’s application to join the Common Market, and the Profumo case, sent his fortunes down almost to where they had been in 1957. And yet his stock was soon to rise again, and if it had not been for the resignation that resulted from a faulty prognosis ...”

“... Some body said of the 18th-century Spencers that the Bible was always on the table – and the cards in the drawer. Certainly, that was true of the first Countess Spencer, mother of Georgiana and Harriet. She was conspicuously religious and a compulsive gambler. Up at 5.30 in the morning, she spent an hour at her prayers and a further hour with her Bible ...”

“... producer at the BBC, working in the Indian section of the Eastern Service, his job was to show Britain’s intentions towards its proudest imperial possession in the kindest of lights. India’s growing demand for independence made it a focus of Axis propaganda: why should Indians die for the nation that denied their political freedom? In March 1942, the ...”

“... much more social life centres on political parties and their off-shoot organisations than in Britain. A shudder of concern went through the Swedish media when as few as 85 per cent bothered to vote in this year’s election (compare that with 75 per cent in Britain in 1987 and a little over 50 per cent in the last ...”

“... a mind’ in America and by Raymond Williams’s Arnoldian meditations in Culture and Society in Britain, Stefan Collini produced his impressive Matthew Arnold: A Critical Portrait in 1994. And there have been two cap-à-pie biographies: Park Honan’s in 1981 (with its provocative identification of ‘Marguerite’) and Nicholas Murray’s two years ago ...”

“... would result in civil war. McGreevy reminds us of the importance of Irish diasporic networks in Britain during the conflict, highlighting the significant numbers of Irish people who had settled in London, Manchester, Glasgow and Liverpool during the 19th century. Dunne and O’Sullivan were part of London’s Irish community. A love of traditional Irish ...”