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“... British industrial scene and its sclerotic incapacity to adapt to technical and economic change. Jim Prior’s memoirs range widely – he was, however reluctantly, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland for three years, and he discusses the province’s horror at length – but if the theme of the book is ‘how decency lost out to ...”

“... a charmed life. Not until then did the Government, in the person of Northern Ireland Secretary Jim Prior, feel able to call his bluff. DeLorean was the son of an immigrant French millwright who qualified as an engineer but began his working life as an insurance salesman and a successful one – all his life he was to retain a salesman’s gift of the ...”

“... that he not only won the vote but aroused cries of ballot-rigging from his Communist rival, Jim Hammond. Gormley immediately resigned, calling for a new ballot: an investigation exonerated him from any irregularities; and his election was confirmed by a substantial majority. Along the way, he managed, in a pub argument, to land a hefty punch in ...”

“... I just find the car too dull, Attractive only to another gull. At any rate, the books are with Jim Prior, Who must decide if we should drop De Lorean And cut the loss or raise the ante higher. De Lorean’s first name should have been Dorian: That ageless face of the Playboy high-flyer Is decomposing like an ancient saurian. I think he’s guilty ...”

“... a most important delegation in his office. It consisted of Sir Arnold Weinstock and Mr James Prior MP. The former was managing director and the latter chairman of the biggest manufacturing company in Britain, GEC. Neither man was a favourite of the Prime Minister. The previous April, Weinstock had infuriated her with his evidence to the House of Lords ...”

“... and repetitive, his book is littered with judgments that do not inspire confidence. To call Jim Prior a technocrat is perhaps to show how distant British politics is from any conception of technocracy. To describe Enoch Powell as ever having been ‘destined for the leadership of the Party’ misunderstands the very nature of post-war ...”

“... I read of the humiliation of some over-mighty cabinet colleague – Geoffrey Howe, say, or Jim Prior or John Moore or Francis Pym – I could picture the scene only too well:I can do no better at this stage than describe my own punishment chamber, which I call the Lady Chapel.   This is not blasphemy on my part. It is a chapel to the Lady (the ...”

“... to have been unduly fascinated by sexual speculation. He finds it worthwhile to tell us that Jim Prior told him that one or two other members of the Cabinet had in turn told him that they had ‘tried unsuccessfully to get a leg over’ Margaret Thatcher. He not only recites the well-known story of Harold Macmillan’s cuckolding by Robert Boothby ...”

“... to pack a wicker hamper And have a picnic down a disused mine, But still the odd factotum like Jim Prior At least seemed relatively a live wire. Now Prior’s gone and in comes a new broom Named Twitchit. Rabbit? Sorry, I mean Hobbit. His eyes like lasers penetrate the gloom. He takes the nation’s pulse like ...”

“... involved in placing arms orders in the UK worth £800 million! On hearing that, another minister, Jim Prior, who had breezed into the room, cried: “We’ll give him a gong!”’ Reporter got his knighthood the following year, while Pincher’s reward comprised three bottles of champagne and a large tin of the best caviar sent every Christmas by the ...”

“... sending them flowers, showering them with concern – was recognisably the same person of whom Jim Prior complained to Hugo Young in 1981: ‘She hasn’t really got a friend left in the whole cabinet. One reason she has no friend is that she subjects everyone to the most emotionally exhausting arguments; the other is that she still interrupts ...”

“... had entered the Queen’s bedroom in Buckingham Palace, but that Mrs Thatcher would not let him. Jim Prior unsuccessfully tried to resign as Northern Ireland Secretary after a mass break-out of Republican prisoners from the Maze prison, and Peter Brooke failed in a more recent attempt to leave the same office after he had sung a song on a television ...”

“... of all dates from long before the boy from the Rhondda made it to the Speaker’s chair, and shows Jim Callaghan dropping on his knees to pray with Thomas and then, having softened him up, requesting his support for the party leadership. True or false – and who cares? – this is just old-fashioned Parliamentary back-stabbing, and Viscount Tonypandy, with ...”

“... through patterns of imagery.’ ‘God help us,’ said Gunning-Forbes loudly. Reading Jim Crace’s Quarantine, I was powerfully reminded of Froulish’s projected stuck-in-a-lift novel. A lugubriously entertaining secondary character in John Wain’s wonderful picaresque fiction, Hurry on Down (1953), Froulish went on to present his restive ...”

“... Party hadn’t cared about looks when it picked the flaccid Wilson, the much-creased figure of Jim Callaghan or the stooping, stick-waving Foot. A bit of deconstruction suggested this was all a blind, that Labour had just had a Welsh boyo and an Edinburgh lawyer as leaders, neither of whom had made it. That was quite enough Scots, Picts and people from the ...”