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“... I still recall my acute disappointment with Michael Howard’s The Franco-Prussian War, published some thirty years ago. The subject was exciting – what with the desperate German infantry assaults at Gravelotte and the dramatic unveiling of the ultra-secret mitrailleuse – and the book was thick enough to promise much good fun to any schoolboy eager to read of battles with a threepenny bag of crisps at his side ...”

“... though it features in what they have to say about ‘common sense’, where they quote Michael Howard: ‘Whenever there is a conflict between political correctness and common sense, let me tell you where I stand – firmly on the side of common sense!’ ‘Common sense’ here being a Tory euphemism, as Lowe and McArthur point out, for ...”

“... by Denys Hay is taken), and in 1969 Angus Calder published The People’s War. In the meantime, Michael Howard and Brian Bond, at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, widened the dimensions of the military history taught there. In 1970 the ‘Fontana History of War and Society’ was launched (‘society’ meaning British or ...”

“... two years later when the parliamentary Conservative Party effectively staged a coup, installing Michael Howard as the sole candidate without consulting the membership. In 2007, Lib Dem members chose Nick Clegg over Chris Huhne as their leader by the narrowest of margins. Given that Huhne was to end up in jail in 2013 you might think this was the wise ...”

“... If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, it follows that the enemy of Michael Howard is my hero. So awful was Howard’s long reign at the Home Office that many liberals sought democratic relief from the most blatantly undemocratic section of the establishment: the judiciary ...”

“... in practice, and in any case an immense task of sorting, translating, and analysing lies ahead. Michael Howard, for instance, in a characteristically crisp introduction to The Quest for Stability, asks the basic question whether at the end of the Second World War Stalin actually aspired to global hegemony. This, he says, ‘we shall be able to tell ...”

“... private car. In transport as in everything else, public enterprise is to be deplored. I am sorry Michael Howard feels that I have misrepresented him in regard to nuclear weapons (LRB, Vol. 4, No 6). I understood that he, as also Lord Carver, were firmly against their ‘first strike’ use, but believed that they should be retained as ‘the ultimate ...”

“... of any Lib Dems, including Kennedy’s enemies and rivals, to cause havoc by speaking up. And then Michael Howard announced his intention to stand down as Conservative leader the day after the election, when there were still a few seats not declared. So any Lib Dems eager to stab Kennedy in the back would have to wait until after the Tories sorted ...”

“... leader was far too damaging to be employed only two years before an election, and by a clever coup Michael Howard was installed without opposition. Not surprisingly, he proved infinitely better than his two predecessors, but he did not have enough time, and never looked anything like a winner. As a result of Tory inadequacy, Labour won easily in 2005 and ...”

“... him: Gordon Brown wouldn’t be the only disappointed person were Tony Blair to be succeeded by Michael Howard. Caracalla was succeeded by Macrinus, a co-conspirator of Martialis, the man who did the actual stabbing and was shortly afterwards caught and impaled. Macrinus, thoroughly incompetent, was dead within 14 months, to be replaced by ...”

“... which so far runs to four volumes by F.H. Hinsley and three collaborators, and now this volume by Michael Howard, the astonishing record is clear and long but also – strangely for a subject of such encrusted deviousness – entirely believable. With admirable skills of exposition and a truly awesome mastery of deception’s dodgy ambience and ...”

“... hundreds of thrusting young Fabians and other ambitious New Labour apparatchiks, not to mention Michael Portillo – with just one heroic heckler. She tolerated the cant for well over an hour, her reticence finally breaking when Campbell said that there are good people who go into politics, and bad people: ‘Like you, Campbell, you lying bastard,’ she ...”

“... deputy prime minister (Charles Dance) as part of a repeatedly thwarted scheme to depose the PM (Michael Gambon) – is so outraged by the abuse directed at the government by the leader of the opposition, at the disrespect being shown to his posse, that he rises from his seat and crosses the chamber, in heroic slow motion, through a forest of arms raised in ...”

“... war, for he added: ‘Happily there seems no reason why we should be more than spectators.’ Michael Brock shows with great skill that it was not so much the German invasion of Belgium but the precise nature of that invasion which produced a wide British consensus for war 11 days later. In most cases, then, as ...”

“... swathes of British social policy. But that is because they are allowed to by politicians like Michael Howard. We do not know how effective as managers of opinion the tabloids are. On the one occasion when a politician (Stanley Baldwin) has seriously taken them on, the politician won hands down. What does not work is the attempt to anticipate the ...”