“... of indignant energy has fired the reviews of this book, many of them by Mrs Thatcher’s former Cabinet colleagues, largely because of the sheer outrageousness of those claims to frankness and humility. And there has, of course, been no difficulty in showing that, in these memoirs as in her career, Thatcher has been neither frank nor humble. Mrs Thatcher ...”

“... for Rhondda since 2001, he is a former deputy leader of the House of Commons and, until becoming shadow minister for culture, was chair of the Committees on Standards and Privileges. He has written an account of Christian Socialism, biographies of Stafford Cripps and – strange conjunction – Glenda Jackson, a two-volume ‘biography’ of Parliament, a ...”

“... of a novel. Most of the contributors were in their twenties in the Sixties; one is a former Cabinet Minister now in her seventies; the last entry is by two sisters in their teens. The women come from five continents: some are black, one is Irish, one Greek, one Australian. They include a film star, a jazz singer, several writers of different sorts, a ...”

“... of knowing when, or whether, he would ever get back into the House of Commons, let alone achieve cabinet rank. Hattersley, by contrast, is a former cabinet minister, and currently Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. He could, within a matter of ...”

“... Chilcot hoped to begin this process in 2013, but negotiations over the publication of minutes of cabinet meetings and the correspondence between Tony Blair and George W. Bush delayed things by a year. In 2014 it was agreed that a ‘small number of full extracts from the minutes of [Cabinet] meetings’ thought to be ...”

“... Obrador sent signals that he supported this kind of plurality. He said that his cabinet would include some very well respected intellectuals and public figures, but even then some writers thought that López Obrador behaved at times like a caudillo. They had a point: López Obrador was suspicious of political analysts and of any intellectual ...”

“... minister responsible for the army, ranking only fourth in the defence hierarchy. He was not in the cabinet. In the early 1960s Profumo had two basic roles to fulfil. The first was as a point man between the British military establishment and the new government in Washington, a town presided over by another John/Jack the lad. Profumo’s go-getting reputation ...”

“... about positive vetting was known. Oldfield confessed to Sir Robert Armstrong, secretary to the Cabinet, and left his post. He was ill. He had cancer, but an army hospital diagnosed it as diverticulitis. He was wrongly diagnosed until near the end. He died in 1981. MI5 were not satisfied with his death. In 1987, there were more press leaks. The Sunday Times ...”

“... the heckling and the suppression of hecklers. It is common to see political rivals – a cabinet minister and his shadow, for example – conducting a vigorous open-air session in a shopping precinct. All very well-mannered, the essence of Nordic politeness? Yes, but also curiously intent and passionate, the sign ...”

“... and on his mother’s to a craft aristocracy of great distinction. She was descended from royal cabinet makers – her father was Jean-François Oeben, her stepfather Jean Henri Riesner. Eugène’s precise inheritance on his father’s side is unclear, for who was his father? Charles Delacroix was incapacitated by a growth on a testicle at the time of ...”

“... by the artist, or brought in by neighbours. They lie around, some of them, in a rusty deep-freeze cabinet. For decades. Spare parts waiting for a brass-hinged box, or carved sarcophagus, to hold them. The titles of these pieces are penny plain: Stone Container, Guillemot Boatman (reproduced here), Cuckoo, Rocking Horse Skull, Seal Oil Stone, Hooded ...”

“... admirable description of what has happened to, say, Gordon Brown or Tony Blair. All those Labour shadow ministers who argue now that it will be too expensive to take railways, coal, gas, telephones, electricity and water back into public ownership should read Contemporary Capitalism, especially the chapter on the balance of power between the economic ...”

“... after his conversion in March 1851, an Anglican bishopric became vacant, Manning, told by a cabinet minister that he would certainly have got it, replied: ‘What an escape my poor soul did have.’ Strachey’s comment is that ‘in truth, Manning’s “poor soul” had scented nobler quarry.’ What, he goes on, was the position of an English bishop ...”

“... revving drowns all other sounds –The outside world glides slyly by like a silent film,The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari.Batches of two hundred tired prisoners; patches on battledresses;Burned-out shell of enemy tank; a big Bruegel hellOf vehicles burning on the cracked horizon, shroudsOf black smoke thrown across orange sky. Light ebbs. WebsOf shell ...”

“... and rub; she looks unsure, out of place, a small pale face swallowed up by a dark background, the shadow of a vein pulsing at her temple. Then, in another light, she looks as she is supposed to: a noblewoman with a high forehead, in the setting she was born for, wearing the kind of clothing and jewellery to which she was accustomed, and if not proud then at ...”