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“... governments between 1976 and 1985, was a decisive success, but that the gains were lost when Nigel Lawson let things rip, causing a boom that had to go bust. The book falls into two parts. The first consists of articles which appeared in newspapers and journals between 1975 and 1989, focus and context being provided by a general introduction and ...”

“... In a publishing season of big books, this must be the biggest. Nigel Lawson learned his trade as one of the ‘teenage scribblers’, whom he later disparaged, on the Financial Times. ‘The length that comes most naturally to me is, not surprisingly, that of a rather long newspaper article,’ he observes. His old skill in knocking out a story in a series of effective paragraphs has not deserted him, but here he has joined them up, story by story, each with its own sub-head, into no fewer than 81 chapters, not to mention fifty pages of annexes ...”

“... because more investors suddenly wanted to sell than to buy shares. Prices began to fall, and what Nigel Lawson has called the ‘herd’ instinct of the market ensured that the fall, once started, became self-reinforcing. However, this mechanistic explanation throws no light on why there should have been a sudden reversal of sentiment in the ...”

“... with Herself on the matter. As this was during his stint at the Treasury under Chancellor Lawson, who was determined to get Britain in by hook or by crook, he apparently decided he’d better not disagree openly with his immediate superior, though he did tell him his views privately. Then, when he steps over Geoffrey Howe’s bloodstains and arrives ...”

“... incantation of ‘compassionate conservatism’? We are about to find out. Thatcher’s chancellor Nigel Lawson once said, with the hint of a sneer, that the NHS is ‘the closest thing the English people have to a religion’. There seems every likelihood that the NHS will become the defining feature of a new one-nation mutation in post-Anglican ...”

“... poll tax is now the leading candidate to replace the rates. And then there is the strange case of Nigel Lawson. A week or two ago he gave evidence to a House of Lords Select Committee. It was suggested to Mr Lawson that some of the great captains of industry – the Lord Weinstock, the Lord Aldington, the Lord ...”

“... the Prime Minister, Peter Jenkins reports, has had occasion to tell him to ‘get a haircut’ – Nigel Lawson reassured his audience at the Mansion House in the autumn that revenues were high and the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement could soon be reduced to about a billion a year. Ten billion, he announced, can now be put aside for future ...”

“... rather than the pragmatic pursuit of growth, employment and other real economic ends. This is what Nigel Lawson meant when, in Seventies-speak, he proclaimed: ‘Rules rule, OK?’ Admittedly, when he rose to his dizzy pinnacle of power at No 11 Downing Street, he found that his famous neighbour had her own, crucially different, conception of what ...”

“... Exchequer from 1979-83, during the period of the so-called ‘Thatcher experiment’; and that of Nigel Lawson, who succeeded him at the Treasury from 1983-89, during the period of the so-called ‘economic miracle’. The whimper – apologia is a less pejorative term – followed as a natural result. All three had time on their hands ...”

“... intolerable and rules out any rationale for co-operation between them and the opposition. Now that Nigel Lawson has spilled some two-thirds of a million words in offering his own account of that era, we can share ‘the view from No 11’ with him. Lawson admits that he may have been ‘slow to recognise the ...”

“... a record Jewish presence not only in Mrs Thatcher’s Cabinet – including, at its peak, Joseph, Lawson, Young, Rifkind and Brittan – but among those on whom Mrs Thatcher leant for private advice: Joseph, Lawson, Alfred Sherman and the Saatchi brothers. Able young Jewish MPs (and there are now quite a few on the Tory ...”

“... late as 1988, after all, the top marginal rate was 60 per cent; it was reduced to 40 per cent by Nigel Lawson in what was probably the most reckless budget of the modern era. The capacity of local government to meet its traditional duties should be restored. One of the things felt most acutely by Ukip voters is the decay of services from local ...”

“... important reason for her dislike was the leaders of the larger European nations being her equals. Nigel Lawson observed that she was ‘mesmerised by power’ and therefore much preferred the rulers of the United States and the Soviet Union to those of our European partners. Mrs Thatcher, President Mitterrand agreed, ‘is like a little girl of eight ...”

“... eyes, comfortable and predatory. He seems poised between repletion and dyspepsia, like a bewigged Nigel Lawson, arrested for all time at the moment of incipient eructation. James Winn says: ‘His short, squat figure later led his enemies to call him “Poet Squab”, and the plump birdlike face in this picture justifies the nickname.’ When ...”

“... rival Leave organisations. Leave.eu is financed by the insurance tycoon Arron Banks and blessed by Nigel Farage and Ukip. Vote Leave is led by Michael Gove, Gisela Stuart and Boris Johnson, with the support of other longstanding Eurosceptic ministers and former ministers, such as Iain Duncan Smith, Nigel Lawson and ...”