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“... Denis Healey, a politician who long ago established that the hobnailed boot can be wielded with just as much delicacy and skill as the épée, once said of David Owen that the Good Fairy who attended his birth had generously bestowed upon him the three qualities of charm, intelligence and good looks. He is then reported to have added: ‘What a pity that the Bad Fairy made him a shit ...”

“... When they asked Haldane what sort of an army he had in mind, his reply was: A Hegelian army.’ Denis Healey calls his six years at the Ministry of Defence in the Sixties ‘the most exhilarating period of my life’ and ‘the most rewarding of my political career’. These are, of course, relative judgments, reflecting the barrenness of Labour ...”

“... his years, if not mortality too. Yet in the end his death has given his old friend and rival Denis Healey the satisfaction of having the last word, explicitly criticising the founder of the SDP for having had such a silly idea, while implicitly celebrating his own good sense in sticking with the Labour Party. Which of them had the more fulfilling ...”

“... it was designed to be read in that way, since the use of parts of it would show that he and Mr Healey were at loggerheads. The statement is reprinted in this book. It begins: ‘Labour believes in a strong defence for Britain and Britain’s allies ... Labour aims to make Britain strong enough with her allies to counter a conventional attack without resort ...”

“... This has been an exceptionally serious debate,’ said Denis Healey on Wednesday 16 April, in contributing to the principal occasion on which the House of Commons gave its mind to the American air strike on Tripoli and Ben Ghazi, two days before, and to the Prime Minister’s decision – with the minimum of Cabinet consultation – to play the part of an ally by sanctioning the use for that purpose of bases in Britain ...”

“... up at Blackpool last October will not be changed in any fundamental way and that Michael Foot and Denis Healey will therefore have to fight the next election on a programme closer to the French Communist Party’s than to that of any other important working-class party in the Western world. Labour has been losing support since the early Fifties. The gap ...”

“... Others have written autobiographies. All are full of evidence of the impotence of office. Even Denis Healey in his recent popular autobiography admits that the notorious ‘IMF cuts’ in 1976 were probably based on a false prospectus presented to him by international bankers who knew they were deceiving him. But in all these cases the former ...”

“... Party, seemed bent on hounding left-wingers into the wilderness. The bitterness was intense and Denis Healey, and all others identified as right-wingers, reap the whirlwind today. Some commentators touted the notion of a political realignment in which Labour would be a centre, potential governing, party and the Left would split off to form a party in ...”

“... ever after. The Anglo-French Variable Geometry aircraft project, which had the robust backing of Denis Healey as Secretary of State for Defence, was grounded after a sustained campaign by the tireless Scot. Again, he helped to defeat James Callaghan’s legislation designed to provide a devolved government for Scotland. But no occupant of 10 Downing ...”

“... surrender to both the Left and the Unions. There had been precious little support from colleagues. Denis Healey often missed crucial meetings: despite his vast experience and natural belligerence, there was no fight in him. Roy Hattersley was ever seeking compromises that slipped away into nothingness. Others, sound at heart, were wearied by the struggle ...”

“... the 1980 Party Conference by authors who have some concern about the future of the Labour Party. Healey’s is a magnificent picture-book strung on a slender autobiographical thread, which he describes as being ‘partly about photography, partly about the world and partly about me’. Although he has included some political anecdotes, the book makes no ...”

“... Commander-in-Chief’s no less official report, and endorsed by the Prime Minister. Indeed, when Denis Healey, from the Opposition Front Bench, and I questioned Ministers, in the Monday and Tuesday Commons exchanges immediately after the Sunday sinking, we were given the impression that one of our submarines had come upon the Belgrano in a threatening ...”

“... were frankly puzzled: Brian, David and I all said we got on like a house on fire with Denis Healey and Joel Barnett, even if Edmund was a more difficult customer.’ Denis Healey was forced to make too many compromises with the spending ministries in these early years. He was forced to do so by the ...”

“... think so now (though that belief has been hard tested – especially when, after just losing to Denis Healey in Labour’s Deputy Leadership contest in 1980, he claimed in a television interview that he was the deputy leader of the Party, since more people had defected from it to form the SDP than made up Healey’s ...”

“... assault on the deputy leadership the following year, when he came within a whisker of defeating Denis Healey. ‘It has been a staggering result,’ he wrote in his diary in the immediate afterglow of heroic defeat, ‘with all the media against us, the most violent attacks by the shadow cabinet, the full intervention of Michael, the abstention of a ...”