“... London foreign correspondents: Nevinson of the Daily Chronicle, Steevens of the Daily Mail and MacDonald of the Argus (Steevens, the most gifted, would die in Ladysmith); all of them published books which Foden has used as source material. Steevens seems to have been a classic Guardian type: ‘Milner, Rhodes, even Chamberlain is culpable to some ...”

“... over the English Channel towards the chalk cliffs of Old Harry Rocks in Dorset, both the shot and George Fenton’s orchestral score slyly reminiscent of the opening of The Sound of Music, though the solitary figure who gradually comes into view on the cliff edge is dressed in a sturdy bright blue anorak rather than the costume of a novice nun. Unlike Julie ...”

“... been a salient issue in British politics since the second half of the 18th century.* The rise of George III’s favourite, John Stuart, Third Earl of Bute, to prime minister only 16 years after the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745-46 – when the invading Highland army got as far as Derby – provoked a torrent of outrage in the English media. At the forefront of ...”

“... the loss of empire.But another narrative ‘remains remarkably dominant’, as Kowol says. In 1941 George Orwell published his socialist-patriotic essay ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’, whose arguments were similar to those of J.B. Priestley in the Sunday evening radio broadcasts aired from June to October 1940 which so irritated Churchill that he exerted his ...”

“... tout court. When millions enjoy something, the interest it arouses need not be aesthetic. George Orwell saw propaganda in boys’ weeklies and ‘the worm’s-eye view of life’ in seaside postcards. He was hardly concerned with Frank Richards as a novelist or (despite his essay’s title) the art of Donald McGill. A better reason for paying ...”

“... in the work which, more than any other book, provided the title-deeds of the cultural revival: George Davie’s The Democratic Intellect, published by Edinburgh University Press in 1961, was fallible as a history of Victorian Scottish universities, but an eloquent restatement of the deductive basis of the Scottish intellectual tradition assaulted by Buckle ...”

“... by the much more violent physical force of the Government. Challinor recalls the computation of George Rudé, who studied riots and violent demonstrations from 1736 (the Porteous riots) to the Chartist high tide of 1848. During those 112 years seven people were killed by protesters; 609 by the forces of law and order putting down the protests. As Engels ...”

“... that battle, he was adored as the saviour of Hanoverian Britain from Jacobites and papists. As George II’s soldier son, he was the ‘martial Boy’; for Drury Lane audiences, ‘The noble Youth, whom ev’ry eye approves/ Each tongue applauds, and ev’ry Soldier loves … Strength to his Arm, and Vict’ry to his Sword.’ Today, he is remembered only ...”

“... Kurt Cobain (his group Radish does not pan out, and Hanson takes up the teen-rock slot). We spy on George Lucas at his 3000-acre Skywalker Ranch in northern California as ‘the great artist of Nobrow’, too busy for filmmaking, oversees the retailing of his Star Wars brand. (This chapter begins: ‘I go to the supermarket to buy milk, and I see Star Wars has ...”

“... assassinations and mass killings. Yet it still gives me an eerie feeling to read about people like George Orwell, Stephen Spender and Raymond Aron, to say nothing of less admirable characters of the Melvin Lasky stripe, taking part in surreptitiously subsidised anti-Communist ventures – magazines, symphony orchestras, art exhibitions – or in the setting up ...”

“... orphaned sons, Frederick and Maurice, had been brought up by Alexander alongside his own son George. Born within four years of each other, not simply cousins but three siblings in a double family, Mr Frederick, Mr Maurice and Mr George were to work together for over half a century. By 1914 they had made Macmillans ...”

“... moral reminders from Labour Party history. Benn’s father led the Liberal defection from Lloyd George in 1924, and stood up in Ramsay MacDonald’s ill-fated Cabinet to argue against dole cuts in 1931. Michael died as the brave new postwar world of the UN and the welfare state was taking shape. The diaries also record ...”

“... union by killing nationalism in Scotland ‘stone dead’, in the words of the Labour politician George Robertson. Under the Additional Member System introduced for elections to the Scottish Parliament, regional list MSPs are elected on a formula designed to correct the unrepresentative results which arise from the use of first past the post elections for ...”

“... an avenue for pompous ceremony. By the time Buckingham Palace’s grand new façade was completed, George V, another stickler for dress, was on the throne. He even insisted on a strutting ornateness featuring Britannia and seahorses for the high-value stamps issued in his reign. Stamp-collecting was made fashionable by the pharmacist Edward Stanley ...”

“... to fit it. Yet this, again, is hardly true. Some English, for instance, might have feared Lloyd George or Bevan, but many more respected and hardly any mocked them. The problem was, as Westlake notes, that Kinnock’s career was ‘founded on his oratorical powers’, not on any great achievement in government or politics, and that he was perhaps the last ...”