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“... In his memoirs Roy Jenkins describes John Kennedy as the best President of the USA in the past four decades. It is a curious, not to say unfashionable verdict. The demolishers of the Kennedy legend have been carrying all before them in the past few years. So battered is the Kennedy reputation that it is almost time for a new school of revisionist historians to rehabilitate the myth of Camelot on the Potomac ...”

“... every year. BBC Television has, each year, a single Dimbleby Lecture. It was one of these which Roy Jenkins used to put forward the ideas which led to the creation of the Social Democratic Party and the SDP-Liberal Alliance. One cannot imagine his lecture being spread over six broadcasts. The effect of doing so would have been to reduce, not ...”

“... Director of Covent Garden and so on; ‘a fine exemplar of the civilisation he portrays’, as Roy Jenkins wrote in a review of author and book together. What made Our Age so arresting was its combination of self-promotion and self-flagellation, and Annan’s wistful reflections on the failures, as well as the successes, of his own generation. Put ...”

“... school, Highgate, and thence to Oxford, where he began a lifelong friendship and rivalry with Roy Jenkins, a steadier if equally ambitious intellectual, but one who always conceded Crosland’s superior brain. The Second World War interrupted and leavened his student politics, active service providing its own kind of filter. Afterwards, he returned ...”

“... Constable of this now greatly enlarged Strathclyde force. Within a few days of this appointment, Roy Jenkins, the then Home Secretary, accompanied by the Home Office Permanent Secretary, descended upon Strathclyde. McNee immediately spotted that they had not come for ‘any ordinary piece of police business’. Their real purpose was to form an opinion ...”

“... letter to the Times, Lords Hailsham, Drogheda, Carrington, Goodman and Weinstock, and Messrs Roy Jenkins and James Prior, said they felt it was a good time, in view of the new publicity about the Ward case, to place on record their sense of admiration for the dignity and courage displayed by Mr and Mrs John Profumo and their family in the ...”

“... by Nicholas Deakin in Colour and Citizenship as ‘the liberal hour’. The then Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, accepted the demand made by the Board, but, very reasonably, requested evidence that discrimination on the grounds of race, colour or national or ethnic origin was prevalent in the areas of employment, housing or the provision of public ...”

“... The sudden death of Roy Jenkins took us all by surprise. He was over eighty, of course, and with a heart problem that had required major surgery. This latterly gave him a good excuse to sit down at receptions: all the better to conduct vigorous conversational campaigns while maintaining eye-contact, not least, at suitable intervals, with the wine waiter ...”

“... I don’t think scrapes signify to a government in their first year.’8 February. At lunch with Roy Jenkins, I take the opportunity to ask what he would feel if I were to publish his telling me his surprise (and mild disapproval) at hearing Derry Irvine address the Prime Minister to his face as ‘young Blair’ at a Chequers weekend. ...”

“... the White House. Heath is the nearest thing This Blessed Plot has to a politician hero; apart from Roy Jenkins, the other heroes are the usually unsung civil servants: Lee, O’Neill, Robinson, Butler, Palliser etc, who shepherded us into the Community with a skill and persistence which almost made up for the visionless complacency of their predecessors ...”

“... that she let her new party down and damaged her own career by not fighting Warrington – which Roy Jenkins narrowly lost and Williams could certainly have won – in a by-election in spring 1981, when the SDP was riding high, and she had to be persuaded to fight Crosby a few months later. But once she agreed, she was remarkable: stumping door to ...”

“... warfare of Fleet Street than to the battle-lines of politics. In her view, demobilisation loomed. Roy Jenkins is capable of generous and spontaneous gestures: he once gave Harold a gramophone record of Asquith making a political speech. To give a present like that, she notes, is true generosity. She quotes a colleague as saying ‘that the only thing ...”

“... to North London. Capital punishment had been abolished the previous year. The Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, had decreed that convicted murderers, whose bodies had by ancient barbarian law been consigned to quicklime in the prison yard, could be buried in consecrated ground. ‘There may be trouble there,’ the news editor beamed. ‘This chap Alphon ...”

“... must face is their attitude to any social democrats who ‘break out’ from the Labour Party. If Roy Jenkins means what he said in his Dimbleby Lecture, and if his lead for a radical centre is followed by even a handful of Labour MPs, will the Liberals spurn an electoral pact? Grimond himself has few kind words for the social democrats today. But when ...”

“... hadn’t been insulted for their intellectual shortcomings. One (possibly apocryphal) story about Roy Jenkins illustrates the point. He’d been persuaded by a Welsh colleague to hobnob with some of the lads. ‘Buy ’em a drink, Roy. They’ll always remember your kindness and they’ll be flattered you sought them ...”