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“... Norman Lamont, who served continuously at the Treasury from 1986 to 1993 – a period when first Lawson and then Major consistently argued for the ERM – tries hard to pretend that he was too busy dealing with the fairies at the bottom of the garden to notice any of it. He claims that when Britain entered the ERM he turned to a Treasury official and ...”

“... offices of state, to 10 Downing Street in his forties. It is no reflection on his abilities, which Nigel Lawson recognised immediately, to say that under no other circumstances would he have got to where he is so fast. Only 18th-century patronage could have competed with 20th-century patronage. How much difference Major’s leadership of the Tory Party ...”

“... the surviving protagonists of the 1975 referendum – such as the former Europhiles David Owen and Nigel Lawson; Neil Kinnock, a prominent Labour anti in 1975; or Alex Salmond, then a youthful SNP anti-Marketeer – found themselves on the other side of the debate from their former selves. The exception was Jim Sillars. The outspoken Labour anti of 1975 ...”

“... exceeding its outlay on the Falklands War. After the strike ended, the Tory chancellor, Nigel Lawson, described it as ‘a very good investment’.The miners returned to work in March 1985; a thousand had been sacked during the strike, often after being arrested on picket lines. The fate of these men anticipated that of their ...”

“... allowed to rise to levels which decimated British industry, and equally regrettable that Thatcher, Lawson and Major ran down our stock of foreign assets by running huge trade deficits for the last seven years. And it may be regrettable that more of that money was not re-invested here. But those huge capital flows abroad benefited so enormously from the world ...”

“... to herself as ‘head of state’ and talking of ‘I, as a government’. Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson may have fulminated against her, in the course of reviewing this book, but they helped launch the good ship Thatcher and sailed in her fatly for many a year, long sustaining and defending her against those who objected from the outset to ...”

“... that the party was seen to represent ‘what might be termed the capital gains classes’? Why, Nigel Lawson, who twenty years later seemed pretty much at ease with loadsamoney, capital gains conservatism when at the helm of the exchequer. Lawson, it transpires, was something of a slow developer as a Thatcherite, and ...”

“... had come to mean uniformity. In a speech in Glasgow in November 1987, Thatcher’s chancellor, Nigel Lawson, complained that too many sectors of Scottish society were ‘sheltered from market forces and exhibit a culture of dependence rather than that of enterprise’. Assimilation to the values of Thatcherite England was the recipe for economic ...”

“... In 1988, the Prime Minister is telling him that Howe is a blancmange, Kenneth Baker is wet, Nigel Lawson wants to go and make money but is being kept in post at her request, and John Major is her most likely successor. Perhaps more to the point, she had a message for her good friend. By this time, his own days at the Express looked as though they ...”

“... the opportunity to bring a new depth and perception to profiles, has done no better. A profile of Nigel Lawson, ‘maverick at Number 11’, at the time of the Chancellor’s last Mansion House speech, was no more than a review of his four years at the Treasury. Only Terry Coleman, in his extended Guardian interviews, gets close to his subjects. The ...”

“... Conservative politicians write worthwhile accounts of their experience. I can think only of Nigel Lawson and, rather less thoroughly, Geoffrey Howe, who have done us the favour of attempting serious revelation of their public work – though the first Thatcher volume, highly selective as it is, is in a special class, and Douglas Hurd, who did ...”

“... expend over £3 billion on defeating the miners: ‘a worth while investment’, in the words of Nigel Lawson. Compiled around the turn of the year, Digging Deeper brings together 17 authors, mainly but not exclusively academics and all sympathetic to the aims of the strikers. The title alludes to a popular slogan among those collecting funds to aid the ...”

“... remains oddly unabashed, convinced that it was a glorious victory – but then Mrs Thatcher and Nigel Lawson believe they have done great things for the British economy, so he is hardly the only public figure to suffer such delusions. MacGregor’s memoirs are persuasive in one crucial respect. They lend no support at all to the idea that the NUM was ...”

“... such that efficiency gains beyond a predetermined level automatically result in lower prices. Nigel Lawson, the original mad scientist of the electricity experiment, did not ‘think that it made sense to have an “Energy Policy”, over and above the application of the Government’s overall supply-side policy to the energy sector of the ...”

“... peculiar and potent mix of libertarianism and totalitarianism proved less conducive to openness. Nigel Lawson claimed she was obsessed by her secret services. She also encouraged unofficial covert agents, her use of which during the miners’ strike is now widely known. So is Michael Heseltine’s shameless abuse of his secret powers over the Belgrano ...”