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“... Has any other contemporary designer ‘signed’ as many cityscapes as Norman Foster? Perhaps no architect since Christopher Wren has affected the London skyline so dramatically, from the Swiss Re ‘gherkin’ to the new Wembley Stadium arch. Foster has a right to be immodest, and the Catalogue of his work is punctuated with adjectives like ‘first’ and ‘largest’, and verbs like ‘reinvent’ and ‘redefine ...”

“... from a devout Christian congregation a hundred years ago if they had been addressed by Bishop David Jenkins. Under some conditions rationality and common sense are indistinguishable from blasphemy. This simply will not do. There can be no no-go areas for historians. Our job is not only to tell people what happened, but to try to explain ...”

“... no such thing, and it is still hard to work out the rationale, even when you look for it in David Fraser Jenkins and Hugh Fowler-Wright’s The Art of John Piper, a nearly exhaustive survey of his career in all its phases. Fraser Jenkins, who curated the Tate’s 1983 retrospective ...”

“... perhaps, to the cruel though well-meaning Poor Law of 1834. In top-and-tail essays Asa Briggs and David Donnison make what they can of a disparate assembly which ranges from Josephine Butler and Charles Booth to R.I. Morant and William Beveridge. As Donnison points out, equality was seldom their explicit goal. Nor was the growth of a centralised bureaucratic ...”

“... disgrace and departure, and then to a bitter contest for the succession with John Pardoe, gave David Steel an almost impossible task. He was 39, but looked younger, a slight figure with an easy smile, a son of the Scottish manse, neither obviously at home with scholars, like Grimond, or in London society, like Thorpe. ‘The boy ...”

“... 1981, and the launch of the manifesto that came to be known as the Limehouse Declaration. When Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen and I met together that morning, we were clear in our intention: in breaking the mould of contemporary politics, we would create a new radical centre, push the Labour Party into third ...”

“... and early 21st centuries, agnostic clerics such as John Robinson, the author of Honest to God, David Jenkins, the controversial bishop of Durham, the Scots Episcopalian bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway, and the Anglican atheist Don Cupitt belong more convincingly in liberal ranks than with authentic enemies of the Enlightenment on the Christian ...”

“... My favourite memory of Roy Jenkins dates from a golden July evening during the Warrington by-election. He is standing in the front garden of a council house, deep in conversation with an elderly Labour housewife, for whose support he is canvassing. Stooping slightly, and with a courtly gravitas that would not have seemed out of place at a European Summit, he is explaining why the ‘fluctooations’ which have characterised British economic policy for the last ten years have done so much damage to our international credit ...”

“... down: discord, harmony, error, truth, despair and hope, often at the same time. In doing so, Simon Jenkins argues in his new book, she set in train a pair of revolutions which continue to do whatever revolutions do – revolve? – today. The first revolution is the one everybody knows about and, with few exceptions, accepts as a precondition for the material ...”

“... were unquestionably enhanced as authors by their criminality. However, this is not essential: Mr David Stockman, President Reagan’s first Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the OMB, has been offered a million or so for the rendering of his tenure in public office. This latter involved no known larceny or perversion of law: Mr Stockman gained ...”

“... summoned across Whitehall from my office in the Ministry of Defence to see the Home Secretary. Roy Jenkins rose from his chair and said: ‘Well, it’s all over, Callaghan is appointing Crosland.’ He nodded to a handwritten envelope addressed to the President of the French Republic. I knew that it contained a letter declaring his willingness to become ...”

“... staying in Europe. He has shown great political skill and insight.’ He reports also that Roy Jenkins subsequently conceded, most generously, that he had ‘misunderstood’ Wilson’s handling of the issue. It is true, I now think, that Wilson could not have held the European line, and the Labour Party together, through the years of opposition between ...”

“... instead into the free upper air where good arguments are sovereign. It was the fate of Roy Jenkins more than of any other recent figure in British politics to serve, during his life and in some ways since his death in 2003, as the incarnation of these dreams. Over and above his actual achievements and failures, ...”

“... Whatever else it may or may not have been, Hillhead was unquestionably a personal triumph for Roy Jenkins. The crowds which packed the silent, thoughtful meetings were drawn by him. The old ladies who switched tremulously and belatedly from the Tories switched to him. The clever-silly London journalists who explained why the SDP bubble was going to burst made their jokes at his expense ...”

“... forgotten figure, rarely given the credit for the change in the law that he brought about – Roy Jenkins usually gets the praise. Known as Boofy, Arran was a red-faced, white-haired little man who seemed to be in a permanent flap, and spoke rapidly with many a what, what punctuating his scattered thoughts. His column in the Evening News, ‘Lord Arran ...”