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“... of with their rulers. What Disraeli called ‘a spirited foreign policy’, and held up as the best way to turn discontent outwards, had come to be accepted by statesmen everywhere as their domestic cure-all, heedless of the fact that it was bringing a European war closer and closer. In Spain in that era, the two right-wing parties came to an agreement to ...”

“... are not very good: Day-Lewis was not by nature a rhetorician, and his public poetic voice was at best unconvincing, and at worst embarrassingly false (as in his unfortunate poem about Winston Churchill, ‘Who goes home?’). But the very fact that he wrote them must have made his claim to the laureateship seem overwhelmingly strong when the time came. For ...”

“... effective majorities secured, though in Wales only by a whisker.By contrast, the UK debates on how best and how much to tax have often been thoughtful and of enduring value. There are Adam Smith’s four criteria for a good tax: ability to pay, certainty of impact, convenience and cheapness of collection. The 18th century was well aware of what we now call the ...”

“... of Dr Sacheverell (1973), which remains the standard account of the cleric’s career, the late Geoffrey Holmes wondered if Sacheverell’s soaring high churchmanship ‘contains in its very extremity more than a hint of revulsion from his own tainted stock’. This twistedness was not so apparent in his earlier years. As a teenager at Magdalen ...”

“... the status quo, and that, when the process finally broke down, it did so despite Lincoln’s best efforts to preserve slavery in the South, on condition that it not be allowed to expand into new territories. By this reckoning (which most historians outside the neo-Confederate fringe agree on) the North didn’t fail to compromise; it compromised all the ...”

“... to have many friends left. Politics is not a game in which you win the prizes simply by being the best; you need a network of alliances and debts. Politicians buy friends just as customers buy love from prostitutes. When out of office, Heseltine prefers to conduct his affairs from his place of business rather than the Commons. That’s a reasonable thing to ...”

“... to take the boat to England to avail themselves of abortion services there. It will also cost the best part of a million pounds. In this at least, the Labour Party, having secured agreement to a free vote, is on the side of the angels: with the women’s movement, some party spokesmen have formed the major focus of opposition to this Brobdingnagian ...”

“... can be as much as, if not more than, their Parliamentary salaries. Former ministers seem to do the best. Patrick Nicholls, the argumentative MP for Teignbridge, who had to resign his junior ministerial office when he was found a little over the limit in his motor-car, declares two Parliamentary consultancies worth £25,000, one ordinary consultancy, and four ...”

“... surprisingly little material detail, given the central role that manners and habitus play in his best-known work. Then, too, Benjamin was broken by the events of the Thirties and eventually took his own life, whereas Elias repeatedly emphasises the inner confidence he gained from his early years, enabling him to cope with the war, emigration and long ...”

“... Cook Islander. If I’d known then what I know now about Maria, I would have campaigned hard to be best friends. The world’s cameras were suddenly trained on Tahiti at the beginning of last month after the nuclear-bomb test that ended France’s three-year moratorium. Pictures of violence at Tahiti’s international airport at Faa’a and in downtown Papeete ...”

“... In 1936, Almasy starts a passionate affair with Katharine, the young wife of an English colleague, Geoffrey Clifton. Long after the affair has ended, in the last days before the war, Almasy returns to the Gilf Kebir ‘to clear out the base camp’. Clifton is meant to fly in and pick him up. Instead he flies his plane at Almasy in an attempt to kill him. The ...”

“... had committed suicide, and a ceremonial service was held in the House of Commons. But despite his best efforts there was a flaw in the plan. Lord Lucan had vanished just two weeks before Stonehouse and people were on the lookout. So when a bank employee on his lunch break noticed a tall, self-assured Englishman going in and out of a number of different banks ...”

“... in the Roman army. At the time, Foche’s claims were perhaps no stranger than those made by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 1130s that traced the kings of Britain back to Brutus the Trojan, a descendant of Aeneas. As Britain sought to distance itself from France, Foche’s ideas had a certain appeal, but they didn’t catch on straightaway. When, in the ...”

“... be filled in with a date to remind the recipient when the next present is due. Nigel’s creator, Geoffrey Willans, was parodying a document which still lingered in the British national consciousness: the Field Service Post Card, or Army Form A. 2042, produced during the First World War.A. 2042 was designed to be sent to family or friends at home by those on ...”

“... national vanity.) Ehrenpreis’s judgments are better than judicious: they vibrate, as do all the best Augustan antitheses, with a succinct indignation at how cruelly unbalanced is the world which their balanced phrases contain. ‘Ireland was ruined by a policy which added the burdens of a kingdom to the disabilities of a colony.’ (It is the scrannel ...”