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“... is perceptibly the same man who attacked the Royal Titles Bill for recognising republics inside a Commonwealth that was no longer called ‘British’, who fought a sustained campaign against British membership of the European Community that became all the more intense as people declined to embrace its rationale and who set out with bleak, relentless logic ...”

“... for the German occupation. In Rome, unemployed workers looted shops and attacked the 74-year-old foreign minister, Carlo Sforza. It seemed that Europe – exhausted, divided and hungry – was on the verge of succumbing to another political catastrophe, only this time the threat came not from Fascism but from the Soviet Union. By 1949, however, the disaster ...”

“... and deliberate style, leaving behind a collection of territories hopefully christened the British Commonwealth of Nations. The British never put much money or white manpower into running the Empire, a habit rooted in parsimony but consorting well with the appearance of having greatness thrust upon them. Their agents were spread thinly and enjoyed great ...”

“... but they differed over means, not over ends. Their most violent quarrels had to do with foreign and defence policy, not with the pace or direction of socialisation at home. Even their dispute over emergency powers concerned the methods by which a future Labour government would achieve its objectives, not the objectives themselves. Each was a ...”

“... for others: Britain still operated the three intersecting circles, of which the Atlantic and the Commonwealth loomed larger than Europe. We did not refuse economic co-operation with the Continent, as at first institutionalised by the OEEC: we merely underestimated its importance. The idea that France could be anything but a sinking ship, that the West German ...”

“... Cardiff and Belfast. Every telephone directory in Britain gives the number of its London Office, whose library welcomes visitors and whose publications are free of charge. Yet, whenever the British public has a chance to vote on the subject – in the European Elections or the 1975 Referendum – the same complaint is repeated: ‘We haven’t enough ...”

“... bizarrely named Westward Ho! and the recruits referred to as ‘European Volunteer Workers’: ‘foreign workers’, it was felt in Whitehall, was a description that might expose them to hostility. Ministry officials, Gatrell tells us, showed a clear ethnic bias, giving places to people from the Baltic republics ahead of Poles and Ukrainians. Between 1946 ...”

“... Mao exulted: ‘China has stood up!’ Now, for the first time in 156 years, no alien flag, no foreign soldier, no uninvited official defiles any part of the Chinese motherland, with the exception of nearby Macao, but that tiny Portuguese enclave is due to follow Hong Kong before the century’s end. The last of the ‘unequal treaties’ forced on China ...”

“... and a general tendency to underestimate the health implications of moving to such a fierce foreign climate. But Gerzina fails to supply evidence for her assertion that the Government was motivated by ‘racism and a certain amount of xenophobia’. As Stephen Braidwood has pointed out in Black Poor and White Philanthropists, it was a voluntary ...”

“... for Attlee and his colleagues in the new Labour government, particularly Ernest Bevin, the foreign secretary. Before the 1945 election, Labour had adopted a resolution demanding that Jews become a majority in Palestine: ‘Let the Arabs be encouraged to move out as the Jews move in’ (which was what happened in 1948, in a manner of speaking). It was ...”

“... out that he has been unable to deliver anything to his supporters except his antics, scandals and foreign trips. He is certainly unlikely to repeat his success of two years ago, but he is not yet out. The parties seeking to shift the nationalist mainstream away from Zhirinovsky – Vlast Narodu, Derzhava and above all KRO – have their differences. No more ...”

“... things of beauty either, being modest tolls to raise a little revenue, not intended to keep out foreign stuff, and were seldom charged at more than 5 per cent. It was the same in ancient Greece and Rome: customs duties were charged at ports of entry at rates of between 1 and 5 per cent. In Rome, the portoria on luxury imports ...”

“... swearing-in ceremony was to be staged at ten past midnight after his predecessor’s last day in office, to dramatise the urgency with which Reagan was keen to set about fulfilling his campaign promises. But Ronnie swears by astrology and his astrologer warned that the hour of 12.10 was astrally unfavourable. No matter, 12.01 would suggest even greater ...”

“... mind, touchingly appreciative of beauty’. In the company of the Ceremonial Secretary of the Home Office, Clynes was able duly to vouch that the royal parturition was on the level, and that the loyal bonfires could be lit. Aronson concludes this story – a profile in capsule of the whole Ramsay MacDonald experience – with a mixture of lyricism and ...”

“... teacakes – the ones that look like tiny, gaudy anti-personnel mines, the ones the dancers in the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony dressed up as. But the referendum has given a big push to the writing, reading and even the buying of books. The book that has made the loudest splash so far is Lesley Riddoch’s Blossom: What Scotland Needs to Flourish, a ...”