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“... Ross McKibbin’s remarkable study of the way the cultures of class shaped English society has, at a stroke, changed the historiographical landscape. One learns more about almost any aspect of English society by reading this book than one would by reading, for example, A.J.P. Taylor’s English History 1914-45 – which makes it indispensable for anyone studying the politics, sociology or history of English society ...”

“... When Oxford University Press commissioned Ross McKibbin to write the volume in the New Oxford History of England covering the years 1918 to 1951, they got more than they bargained for. McKibbin couldn’t contain what he wanted to say within the covers of a single volume, and Oxford wouldn’t agree to the inclusion of a two-volume work in their series ...”

“... the present constitutional structure of the United Kingdom is probably the one that works best. Ross McKibbin The​ early Scottish referendum results didn’t look good for the would-be dividers of the kingdom. My pro-independence Orcadian friend, down in London for a wine fair, went to bed before 3 a.m., disconsolate, not long after a furious ...”

“... I had with her very recently New Labour thinking on the NHS is for now still very much in place. Ross McKibbin, writing in the LRB of 8 October, expected Corbyn’s leadership to end in tears. If that turns out to be the case, one reason may well be that Corbyn just wasn’t able to translate the support he has in the party into parliamentary ...”

“... year. There is a sad letter from him in the LRB archive, responding in 1991 to a piece by Ross McKibbin praising his and Harold Wilson’s record in government: ‘it is rather nice,’ he wrote, ‘to cease to be a kind of non-person.’ Still, for all the pathos, Callaghan was 68 when he resigned in 1980, the only man to have held all four of ...”

“... honouring three men who have done much to shape British social history over the last four decades: Ross McKibbin, Gareth Stedman Jones and Patrick Joyce. I should say before I go any further that I too am a modern British historian: this is my subject and my tribe. I’ve met the dedicatees, most of the editors and a majority of the contributors to these ...”

“... Clark, Jonathan Coe, Sionaidh Douglas-Scott, Daniel Finn, Dawn Foster, Jeremy Harding, Colin Kidd, Ross McKibbin, Philippe Marlière, James Meek, Pankaj Mishra, Jan-Werner Müller, Susan Pedersen, J.G.A. Pocock, Nick Richardson, Nicholas Spice, Wolfgang Streeck, Daniel TrillingDavid RuncimanSo who​ is to blame? Please don’t say the voters: 17,410,742 ...”

“... stage of the whole UK; what we got was Blairism, an improvement on the class-bound Left but, as Ross McKibbin pointed out (LRB, 3 April), still lacking in the state-reforming energy the moment requires. Like Thatcher before him, Blair has cloaked a sharply intensified centralism in the rhetoric of devolution. What she claimed to be handing down was ...”

“... and pay board. Todd is hardly alone in stressing the centrality of the mother-daughter tie, which Ross McKibbin has called ‘the axis of working-class family life throughout much of England’ in this period. What is striking is the degree of reciprocity she sees in that relationship, and the way, and with what consequences, it changed over time. In the ...”

“... introduced to pacifism and Marxism. Pacifism wasn’t that rare in Labour circles in 1910, but, as Ross McKibbin has shown, Marxism was. It was seen as alien, unpatriotic, confrontational, even unChristian. The sober, cautious and socially conservative middle-aged men who founded the Edwardian Labour Party were entirely opposed to it and Marxists found ...”

“... the working class, but succumbed before long to humdrum TUC tutelage. One other Pelling essay, by Ross McKibbin, is on ‘Work and Hobbies in Britain, 1880-1950’. It quotes commentators who were viewing Britain, already in the first years of this century, as ‘a nation at play’, caring for nothing more than sport. Britons may proudly claim to have ...”

“... between the wars referred in some frustration to its ubiquity, and social historians like Ross McKibbin have also noted its prevalence. But the sniffy views of these campaigners have affected our understanding, with the result that withdrawal appears in the historical record as a traditional relic, a method of last resort, the recourse only of ...”

“... for the LRB, he not only hides his light under a bushel but hides the bushel.12 January. To hear Ross McKibbin give a talk at the LRB about the ‘Blair Project’ – a phrase which I for one can’t pronounce without embarrassment, even if it does mean something more than a passionate desire to win the next general election too. ...”

“... and the only flag that counted was the one missing from the Buckingham Palace flagstaff. Ross McKibbin’s account of the events in the LRB (2 October) has emphasised how diffuse, quirky and quite unhysterical these mostly were. What panic and paranoia there was lay more obviously in the reaction of the authorities, and the media, uncertain how ...”

“... such as justice and equality make a fatal claim to rationality and are therefore bad.’ Similarly Ross McKibbin in this magazine, though much more hesitant about pronouncing on the authenticity of the emotions involved, concluded: ‘a democracy which admired her with such intensity is both incomplete and immature.’For the ‘unbelievable!’ camp, the ...”