“... Since the rise of Scottish Nationalism in the 1970s various prophets have foretold the imminent break-up of Britain. All too often, however, the signs and portents seem to have misled political seers – nationalist dreamers and unionist Cassandras alike apparently confounded by their own predictions. It is easy to discount unfulfilled prophecies, to become inured to pundits crying wolf; but the credibility of the Nationalists with the Scottish electorate has proved more resilient than the credibility of the commentators, and Britain – no longer underpinned in Scotland by loyalty to the ideal of a United Kingdom – remains fragile ...”

“... Despite​ Theresa May’s calls during the election campaign for national unity, Britons don’t really live in a nation-state but in a multinational composite state, whose lineaments were set in the period between the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which established the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, and the Hanoverian accession in 1714. With the defeat of Catholic supporters of the deposed James II in Ireland – then a subordinate kingdom belonging to England – in 1690, sectarian divisions, which foreshadow the differences between today’s Ulster unionists and Irish nationalists, became more deeply entrenched ...”

“... a caste, it might be worth compromising on policy for the sake of a broader-bottomed legitimacy. Colin Kidd Nick Clegg – clever, cultured, flexible – is an ambitious beneficiary of David Cameron’s hospitality, one who presumably hopes to get as much out of it as he can before he is asked to leave, like Nick Guest during his long stay with the ...”

“... Douglas-Scott, Lorna Finlayson, Daniel Finn, Katrina Forrester, Jeremy Harding, Daisy Hildyard, Colin Kidd, James Meek, Ferdinand Mount, Jan-Werner Müller, Jonathan Parry, David RuncimanNeal Ascherson‘On​ 17 June poor France fell. That day, as we trudged past Greenwich … a tug skipper yelled gaily across the water: “Now we know where we ...”

“... the fabric of British political stability – are as much in need of repair as our constitution. Colin Kidd Cameron​ used the victory of ‘No’ to resurrect the West Lothian question at a speed not surprising in such a partisan opportunist. Ed Miliband is right to resist his rushed attempts to exploit promises hurriedly made to Scotland to justify ...”

“... Colin Kidd’s study of Scottish Unionism goes, as he himself insists, sternly against the prevailing ideological current, which is focused on the emergence of political nationalism in both Scotland and Wales. Kidd thinks his book will serve its purpose if it unsettles this debate, and brings about a revision of ‘the basic categories of political analysis ...”

“... species – did not gain intellectual traction until the middle of the 19th century. Instead, as Colin Kidd argues in The Forging of Races, it was religion that provided the benchmarks against which physical difference and racial potential could be measured. After a spirited opening chapter on the illusory nature of racial thinking, ...”

“... T.J. Clark, Jonathan Coe, Sionaidh Douglas-Scott, Daniel Finn, Dawn Foster, Jeremy Harding, Colin Kidd, Ross McKibbin, Philippe Marlière, James Meek, Pankaj Mishra, Jan-Werner Müller, Susan Pedersen, J.G.A. Pocock, Nick Richardson, Nicholas Spice, Wolfgang Streeck, Daniel TrillingDavid RuncimanSo who​ is to blame? Please don’t say the ...”

“... I was struck in reading Political Advice, the excellently quirky collection of essays edited by Colin Kidd and Jacqueline Rose, how often deceit or dissembling comes up. You could be forgiven for thinking that a successful adviser is one who tells half-truth to power. Joanne Paul, for example, describes the debate in More’s Utopia about the obliquus ...”

“... in the 16th century and was already evident in the final flourishings of the old ars historica. As Colin Kidd observed in his review in this paper of Christopher Bayly’s Birth of the Modern World 1780-1914, historians in Europe are again paying attention to the Rest as well as the West, and now that the old empires have gone, are doing so in a way that ...”

“... books, writings that are now being tidied up, edited and steadily published (see for instance Colin Kidd’s review of two such posthumous volumes in the LRB of 22 May 2008). Sisman’s biography gives evidence that he felt this as a failure himself. Even Mrs Thatcher scolded him for weak book productivity. ‘On the stocks? On the stocks? A fat lot ...”

“... destroy more Scottish jobs than Margaret Thatcher, to ruin more pension plans than Robert Maxwell. Colin Kidd In​ an ideal world a fully independent Scotland might be a better place than the quasi-independent state it is now, but why is almost impossible to see given the evasions and silences of the ‘Yes’ campaign. The SNP’s argument is ...”

“... been overconnected. There’s also Brandon Mayfield, Jamal Tarhuni, Mustafa Elgobi, Abdullah al-Kidd, Adama Bah, Yasir Aladdin Afif and Rahinah Ibrahim, among others. How many false positives for how much safety? In the canon of Western jurisprudence, it usually takes only a small number of false positives to call the legitimacy of the whole system into ...”