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“... the sort of person who has to have jokes explained to her, while the book is positively witty. The Downing Street Years is a formidable work, as one would have expected of a woman who was nothing if not formidable. It is professional in every sense: a team product, with Mrs Thatcher directing a crew of ghostwriters, researchers, typists, archivists and ...”

“... well before Wright. Homosexual smears were directed against Edward Heath, Jeremy Thorpe, Norman St John Stevas and Humphrey Berkeley; bogus bank accounts (showing corrupt earnings) were contrived for Edward Short and Ian Paisley; Wilson was seen as the beneficiary of, and a possible participant in, the assassination of Hugh Gaitskell; lists were drawn up of ...”

“... episode was an inspiration for Liz Truss during her short and calamitous stay in 10 Downing Street. Truss, unfortunately, wasn’t aware that on the issue of monetarism, the lady was for turning.It’s not as if nobody noticed at the time. In March 1982, the New York Times wrote that Howe’s subsequent budget – in which the money supply was ...”

“... albeit one with greater relish for his wit than respect for his political judgment. So much for John Vincent, the brilliant author of The Formation of the Liberal Party who became the populist professor of the Thatcherite tabloid press. Whatever else he has lost in the process, it is not his ironic sense of humour, and in appraising one of Disraeli’s ...”

“... London and Oxford in 1882 and 1883, and created a baronet in 1888. And then there is the case of John Arlott, once Forster’s producer at the BBC and later a broadcaster possibly even better known and loved than Forster himself, though here having to answer to the first name ‘George’, perhaps by contamination from the actor George Arliss, once, but no ...”

“... himself shirking the real question. He faced two serious and determined enemies during his time in Downing Street: al-Qaida and Gordon Brown. One, he concluded, represented a force so strong and rooted that it had to be uprooted and destroyed, since confrontation was inevitable; the only question was when and how. The other had to be contained, because ...”

“... rain and the traffic in Whitehall.Not anymore. Carved out of the old Privy Council Court Room in 9 Downing Street, where judges used to meet to hear appeals from convicted murderers in Barbados or the Cayman Islands, there is now a purpose-built grande salle for press conferences, knocked up for £2.6 million by friendly Russian contractors. It is not a pretty ...”

“... to prevent itself being ground between Capital and Labour. Whenever employers or workers visited Downing Street, the Union complained, the Government kowtowed to them, while snubbing those at the centre. One of the aims of this ‘aggregate of consumers and taxpayers’ was to urge the Government to extract income tax from manual workers, those notorious ...”

“... irritated journalists on other newspapers. Part of the story he has to tell is how people like John Cole – yes, the same John Cole – and his successor as News Editor. Jean Stead, dragged the paper more or less reluctantly into mainstream, news-oriented journalism. Coming from what at the time was probably the most ...”

“... sending the message stating that “our war is over” which started the correspondence with John Major, and it is pretty clear in retrospect that one of the intermediaries in the chain between the government and the IRA did in fact embellish the message.’ The peace process, Tony Blair’s former chief of staff is suggesting, began with an ...”

“... Sir John Junor made his reputation mainly as the man prepared to be more bitchy about famous people than any other newspaper columnist. This was the basis on which he conducted his column on the Sunday Express, the paper he also edited for 32 years, and which underpins its less successful appearance nowadays in the Mail on Sunday ...”

“... It is no wonder that none of the particulars I have so far cited appear in Jeffrey Richards and John MacKenzie’s history, exceptionally rich though it is in station lore collected world-wide, and assiduous in its pursuit both of main-line socio-economic themes and of lightly trafficked sub-cultural branches. I claim no special knowledge of my own but for ...”

“... in a frenzy. After I had finished and gone home, the audience swarmed out and laid siege to No 10 Downing Street. It was a very satisfactory start to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. For the next two years there was rarely a week when I did not speak at one or more mass meetings. I estimate that I have spoken in more public halls than either Gladstone or ...”

“... Certainly these men are/were enemies of society – but what society? Did they ever dine in Downing Street, let alone get life peerages? Their stories cover a period when drug pushers and porn pedlars were moonlighting as senior Scotland Yard officers. There is no single recorded instance of any public official, national or local, refusing a ...”

“... on the side of a bus, and before you know it you’ve promised a spending spree so lavish that John McDonnell is accusing you of being ‘reckless’. But something significant has happened along the way that may cause particular concern to traditional Conservative sympathisers in the business and financial sectors. The claim that politicians are ...”