“... introduction and conclusion, and voilà ! His focus on England and Englishness, as opposed to Britain and Britishness, is timely. Earlier this summer, a leader in the Times attacked Tom Nairn, Eric Hobsbawm and especially Linda Colley for supplying a tendentious, politicised justification for the break-up of ...”

“... Social Democratic Party will replace the Labour Party as the main anti-Conservative force in Britain. What is certain is that the omens are far more propitious than anyone could reasonably have expected as recently as three months go. The death-wish which has gripped the Labour Party for the last two years shows no sign of loosening its hold. Though it ...”

“... between armed forces and society. Civil-military relations have not been much of a problem in Britain since they were put on a satisfactory footing about the end of the 17th century: as small a regular army as was indispensable, paid for by annual vote of the House of Commons, and an officer corps drawn so largely from the same class of gentlemen as ...”

“... book’ or a widely read one, or even the cult of a few. A pity, whether one takes the view of Ian Parsons that it is a literary, historical and bibliographical treasure-house or that of Maynard Keynes, not perhaps incompatible, that its highest quality is ‘a certain magnificent Sillyness, using the word in its ancient sense – admirable and attractive ...”

“... embraced fusion cuisine. Multicultural eclecticism, from food to fashion, is the norm in today’s Britain, and not just in the big cities. Among the few groups perceived as uncool are Ulster’s Protestant Unionists. It’s not only that bowler hats epitomise 1950s squareness, or that the symbolic meaning of orange sashes rather undermines their potential to ...”

“... nationalists were acutely aware – that saw Ireland’s population drop and then stabilise while Britain’s surged ahead. From a British perspective, 18th-century Ireland was a bigger and more potentially threatening place than it has been at any time since. The Protestant victories at Boyne, Aughrim and Limerick were pivotal to the establishment of what is ...”

“... of pathos. In this later essay Gelpi admits, frankly, that he finds the continuing hostility in Britain towards Day Lewis’s poetry ‘hard to comprehend’, and he describes their meeting in Harvard rather differently from his account in the book: ‘We became immediate friends despite the 27 years between our ages; I am in fact one month older than his ...”

“... about other countries. The British constitution, he points out, does not recognise insurgency. Britain has had no legal ‘third way’ between peace and war. Hence the tendency has been to treat insurgency as a temporary aberration, and not the result of a breakdown in normality demanding special legal measures. This reluctance to resort to martial ...”

“... we still lack anything comparable to the German Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens. Nor does Britain have an equivalent to John Tebbel’s multivolume history of American publishing. The student of the subject in this country (particularly if he is interested in contemporary matters) will find himself dredging through the pages of more or less ...”

“... should knit,’ one contemporary activist ruefully recalled. To many, this was a welcome change. Britain seemed to some vociferous observers a corrupt and emasculated society, in which the vigour of feminism signalled a failure of masculinity. The concept of peace itself had become curiously feminised, as though it were a sinister ‘other’ to the ...”

“... of the war, correctly stating that Germany would not lose because of economic weakness, that Britain had wasted much of the breathing space she had been given, that the war could not properly be run by peacetime machinery and that a War Cabinet with a commanding personality at its centre was imperative, that the whole of the nation’s resources had to ...”

“... could easily be passed off as ideals. He was an old-style patriot, he liked to say. He wanted Britain to have lots more guns, and more opportunities to use them. He wanted to cut down on welfare handouts, immigration quotas and so on. Although Thatcher was his social inferior, he saw her as a spiritual kinsperson. Indeed, his rare moments of bewilderment ...”

“... London when you dress like a Pakistani?’ ‘Look at my passport – you’ll see it’s one from Britain,’ I answered desperately. But the man continued smiling indulgently. Unable to think of anything to say, I turned round and sauntered away with my hands behind my back. A week later my father and I walked through the streets of Baghdad as exuberant ...”

“... delicate after Nigel Williams’s crashing puns and Fenton’s nudge-nudge alliterations. Ian McEwan’s ‘Berlin’, meanwhile, is an extract from a new novel which looks as though it will build upon the promise of The Child in Time, where he first permitted a queasy humanity to complicate his clinical, beady-eyed apprehensions. The setting is ...”

“... The idea behind these changes is one that was dear to Voltaire’s heart and inspires the title of Ian Buruma’s book: the notion that those institutions which have proved successful in one country, in this case Britain, might, like coconuts, be transplanted elsewhere with the same positive results. Dogged by a combination ...”