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“... he spoke, all the way down to the contraction of his eyebrows. In one sense, then, the fact that John Major’s father spent thirty years in music hall isn’t surprising. In another sense, it is as astounding as it would be to learn that Sir Peter Tapsell began his career as a plumber’s mate. ‘Whatever gifts my parents passed on to their ...”

“... which uses the Upper House as a clerk might use Tippex. The ‘sober second thought’ which Sir John Macdonald, the first Canadian premier (and a notable inebriate) attributed to senates is largely the stuff of legend. To see what lessons may be learned from abroad, Meg Russell has examined seven upper houses in modern democracies. Rather oddly, she omits ...”

“... at that point failed to attract a full-scale and responsible critical study. Since 1948, three major works have been devoted to aspects of his career. The first was a highly tendentious political biography by Albert Ollivier, Saint-Just et la Force des Choses (1954), memorably savaged by Soboul on its appearance. The second was a careful analysis of his ...”

“... Gerald Seymour novel and reach over to turn the radio off. Then I recognise the voice – it’s John Humphrys on Today. I concentrate. On the Falls, apparently, men with hard, cold eyes used to stare sullenly from behind the iron railings that surround the pubs and clubs, planning their next operation. It is Day One, Thursday 1 September. The IRA ...”

“... about the state of society from the Bulger killing is probably a mistake. Blake Morrison has John Major in his firing line, for his statement that ‘we must condemn a little more, and understand a little less.’ An ‘epitaph to a brute culture’, he calls it. Not even his worst enemies would believe ...”

“... began to dominate commentary both on the radio and in the papers. Practically alone of his party, John Major reacted positively, grabbing the now-famous soapbox in Luton and thereby returning to his Brixton political roots. This was the signal for an outbreak of patronising journalism by writers who clearly didn’t know what they wanted. There had been ...”

“... Mrs Thatcher herself was dumped in 1990 and the personal style of government transformed by John Major, there has yet – apart from a very different attitude towards Europe – been any significant change in the conduct of economic and social policy or in the intention behind it. The collection of books and papers under review, most of which ...”

“... Davis not muffed his lines is almost as tantalising as the question of what might have happened if John Smith had lived. Davis’s campaign had been showing signs of weakness, but the conference speeches decisively shifted the narrative, turning him into the politician who had over-reached and Cameron into the natural-born leader. A Davis-led Conservative ...”

“... Powell is 92 this year. He has written 19 novels, four volumes of memoirs, one sort of biography (John Aubrey and His Friends), three plays, two books of collected literary criticism, and now, with the arrival of Journals 1990-92, three volumes of diaries. The D&O is there from the first words of his first novel, Afternoon Men, published 65 years ...”

“... a used Johnnie,’ she added – this being the name by which former members of St John’s College, Oxford, refer to themselves. We knew that because both of us were also, to use the posh term, Johnians. The LRB asked Blair to write a piece, and he did. Its left-is-best vibe makes entertaining reading now, but it’s well written and at least ...”

“... David Cameron is going to have a hellish time with the rebellious fringe of his own party, just as John Major did back then. But this is the wrong sort of mess. It is not compromise and accommodation in the name of defending politics against the forces of nature, technology and finance that threaten to destroy it. It is blackmail and veto power, with ...”

“... feast for an analytical historian. For now, everything in Washington has narrowed to a saying of John Kennedy’s, uttered after the Bay of Pigs, to the effect that ‘success has many fathers – failure is an orphan.’ The debate in Congress, which was very protracted and in some ways very intense, was in reality extremely limited. The partisans of the ...”

“... not only for them but for the whole community. Mrs Thatcher has done for Unionists what John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson did for the whites of Alabama in the Sixties. She has stripped them of ascendancy and privilege, and in so doing has done a service to us all – by placing us on a politically equal footing. What Unionists should ...”

“... for Britain’s diplomats. In a sense they were: the other countries needed no reminding that John Major had a general election in front of him and a nationalist Mrs Thatcher close behind. But if in the short run the opt-out clauses largely silenced the Thatcherite opposition, in longer perspective they were a triumph for humbug. No one had ever ...”

“... and Bill Rodgers. But there can be very little doubt that the existence of the SDP was the major factor in sustaining Thatcherism in defiance of the fact that the Tories were unable to achieve more than a fraction of the popular vote in either the 1983 or the 1987 General Elections. How odd it is that the SDP was among the loudest critics of the ...”