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“... in the work which, more than any other book, provided the title-deeds of the cultural revival: George Davie’s The Democratic Intellect, published by Edinburgh University Press in 1961, was fallible as a history of Victorian Scottish universities, but an eloquent restatement of the deductive basis of the Scottish intellectual tradition assaulted by Buckle ...”

“... by the much more violent physical force of the Government. Challinor recalls the computation of George Rudé, who studied riots and violent demonstrations from 1736 (the Porteous riots) to the Chartist high tide of 1848. During those 112 years seven people were killed by protesters; 609 by the forces of law and order putting down the protests. As Engels ...”

“... that battle, he was adored as the saviour of Hanoverian Britain from Jacobites and papists. As George II’s soldier son, he was the ‘martial Boy’; for Drury Lane audiences, ‘The noble Youth, whom ev’ry eye approves/ Each tongue applauds, and ev’ry Soldier loves … Strength to his Arm, and Vict’ry to his Sword.’ Today, he is remembered only ...”

“... Kurt Cobain (his group Radish does not pan out, and Hanson takes up the teen-rock slot). We spy on George Lucas at his 3000-acre Skywalker Ranch in northern California as ‘the great artist of Nobrow’, too busy for filmmaking, oversees the retailing of his Star Wars brand. (This chapter begins: ‘I go to the supermarket to buy milk, and I see Star Wars has ...”

“... assassinations and mass killings. Yet it still gives me an eerie feeling to read about people like George Orwell, Stephen Spender and Raymond Aron, to say nothing of less admirable characters of the Melvin Lasky stripe, taking part in surreptitiously subsidised anti-Communist ventures – magazines, symphony orchestras, art exhibitions – or in the setting up ...”

“... orphaned sons, Frederick and Maurice, had been brought up by Alexander alongside his own son George. Born within four years of each other, not simply cousins but three siblings in a double family, Mr Frederick, Mr Maurice and Mr George were to work together for over half a century. By 1914 they had made Macmillans ...”

“... moral reminders from Labour Party history. Benn’s father led the Liberal defection from Lloyd George in 1924, and stood up in Ramsay MacDonald’s ill-fated Cabinet to argue against dole cuts in 1931. Michael died as the brave new postwar world of the UN and the welfare state was taking shape. The diaries also record ...”

“... union by killing nationalism in Scotland ‘stone dead’, in the words of the Labour politician George Robertson. Under the Additional Member System introduced for elections to the Scottish Parliament, regional list MSPs are elected on a formula designed to correct the unrepresentative results which arise from the use of first past the post elections for ...”

“... an avenue for pompous ceremony. By the time Buckingham Palace’s grand new façade was completed, George V, another stickler for dress, was on the throne. He even insisted on a strutting ornateness featuring Britannia and seahorses for the high-value stamps issued in his reign. Stamp-collecting was made fashionable by the pharmacist Edward Stanley ...”

“... to fit it. Yet this, again, is hardly true. Some English, for instance, might have feared Lloyd George or Bevan, but many more respected and hardly any mocked them. The problem was, as Westlake notes, that Kinnock’s career was ‘founded on his oratorical powers’, not on any great achievement in government or politics, and that he was perhaps the last ...”

“... suspected subsequently that if anybody had scored a black mark it was me. Those were the days when George Wigg was watching us. Wilson and Icontinued to get on well enough when we met, which was only occasionally, but one was never sure who had last whispered what in his ear and in the end it became possible only for journalists who were prepared to become ...”

“... wet kisses.’ Nor was Lydia without political judgment. During the General Election of 1931, when MacDonald and Baldwin joined forces in the National Government, she wrote: ‘I have rolled my eyes on the manifestos of Ramsey and Stanley, but they close instantaneously with dreariness.’ Through his marriage to Lydia, Keynes broke with the more neurotic ...”

“... Friday, 31 January 1919, when troops and tanks stood by to quell a mass rally, in Glasgow’s George Square, of West of Scotland workers campaigning for a forty-hour week, the event was remembered in the People’s Palace, the museum of labour history on Glasgow Green. A bronze bust of Willie Gallacher by Ian Walters was not so much unveiled as ...”

“... on one side, Unitarian on the other. All three Trevelyan brothers were unbelievers, but with George it was much more than mere absence of belief, it was a creed in its own right. ‘Two terrible things have happened this week,’ he was heard to say, ‘my son has bought a motorbike and my daughter has become a Christian.’ As a young don, he was turned ...”

“... the book was subtitled with a flourish: ‘The war between Downing Street and the media from Lloyd George to Callaghan’. For 40 years and more, Margach had enjoyed the confidence of prime ministers. He was in the private sitting room of Number Ten when Ramsay MacDonald returned from the palace on resigning. He belonged to ...”