“... in history are all the rage – nowhere more so than in the study of the English Civil Wars. John Morrill, that panjandrum of Civil War revisionism, is reported to have advised a recent meeting of the Royal Historical Society to think of 1640-60 not as the first of Europe’s modern revolutions but as the last of its wars of religion. J.T. Cliffe’s ...”

“... does use them is almost certain not to get a high-level government position. But Admiral Dennis Blair, the new director of national intelligence, greatly admires Freeman: just the sort of person, he thought, to revitalise the intelligence community, which had been very politicised in the Bush years. Predictably alarmed, the Israel lobby launched a smear ...”

“... John Smith was ‘one of them’. Tony Blair is ‘one of them’. And so are Chris Smith and Jack Straw and half the Shadow Cabinet and many more on the backbenches including Frank Field, that one-man think-tank of the Labour Right. ‘They’ are the Christian socialists, architects of New Labour, ready to provide the movement with the ethical foundations which seem sorely missing ...”

“... is alleged to be no longer ‘trusted’ he is still personally popular, and the well-known Blair charm will be ladled out in gallons at the next general election. Even in the party’s awkward squad, many MPs are convinced that Blair remains their surest electoral hope. They have probably also concluded that, given ...”

“... of the ‘rogue state’ is a lot closer to the work of a neo-Kantian political philosopher like John Rawls than to anything you will find in Hobbes. But it is true that far from being stuck in the past, the Americans have moved beyond Hobbes, and Europe, in one crucial respect. That is in their preoccupation with the new threat posed by weapons of mass ...”

“... dangers. If the Eddisbury by-election result is the best the Conservatives can do at midterm, Mr Blair has little to fear. Despite this, however, and despite the fact that he has an overall aim – modernisation – from which he will not deviate, the Prime Minister is said to be ‘frustrated’, as the observer who looks for a coherent programme is likely ...”

“... government’ and law and order have long been crusades of British tabloids, but now Tony Blair, sensitive to popular priorities after Labour’s four successive electoral defeats, also feels that Sun readers need courting. Not for nothing did he travel to Hayman Island, Australia to address News Corporation executives; and not for nothing is he keen ...”

“... separable. Writers – Sir Thomas More, Sir Walter Ralegh, Samuel Daniel, Ben Jonson, Thomas May, John Milton, Andrew Marvell and many more – moved between history and poetry or drama, finding in them complementary means of instilling virtue and wisdom and influencing events. History, which was seen as a branch not only of scholarship but of rhetoric and of ...”

“... decades. What appealed to the young and to the many who had left the party in disgust during the Blair/Brown years – what appealed to the people who turned the campaign into a genuine social movement – was precisely what alienated the political and media cliques. Corbyn’s campaign generated a mass movement that renewed the base of the Labour Party ...”

“... and Edmond Halley, those grandees of the Royal Society, and on the other the Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, the doyen of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. Johns levels the same complaint against historians of science as against Eisenstein: that they take the subject ‘outside history’ and miss the struggles, practical as well as ...”

“... John Donne​ is a modern rediscovery. His reputation, high among his contemporaries, fell after their time, along with those of other 17th-century metaphysical poets who would wait equally long for rehabilitation. The late 17th century and the 18th, committed to orderliness of metre and feeling, disliked the ‘forced’ and ‘unnatural’ rhythms of his verse, his ‘false’ conceits, his unruly sensuality ...”

“... Stalinist stalwart of the CPGB, later authoritarian and ever-loyal Blairite home secretary, John Reid. An hour later, as I’m leaving, the following conversation takes place: Reid: Halloo. Me: Glad you jumped ship in time? Reid: I left after Blair resigned. Last three years and Broon a total disaster. Me: I ...”

“... where one can.In his recent book Dick: The Man who Is President (New Press, £14.99), John Nichols, the Nation’s Washington correspondent, makes a persuasive case for the (by now fairly familiar) idea that the vice-presidency is the real locus of power in the current US administration: Cheney runs the show and pulls the strings while the ...”

“... one side, and studies of religion in the English Revolution on the other. Lancelot Andrewes and John Donne are subjects: literature has seen to that. And so is Puritanism: America has seen to that. But not the ordinary mainstream history of the Jacobean Church. We still tend to see that history through Victorian eyes, our understanding of early Stuart ...”

“... her speeches were greeted with jeers and she was called a ‘stupid cow’ by Tony Marlow, one of John Major’s Maastricht rebels (there’s a video of this on YouTube: Marlow looks very pleased with himself, especially when he manages to repeat the remark after the Speaker, Betty Boothroyd, asks him whether he’d used ‘unparliamentary language’). When ...”