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“... ensure that the hard questions don’t get asked. They aren’t always asked in these three books. Anthony Butler’s Cyril Ramaphosa is a campaign biography of the man most South Africans wanted to succeed Thabo Mbeki, but not only did he refuse to run, he also refused to co-operate with his biographer. Ramaphosa, an immensely private person, began as a ...”

“... Patrick Cosgrave presents us in this short book with a remarkable analysis of why Mr Butler was never chosen to be prime minister. When I think of Rab Butler, I recall Addison’s words: ‘’Tis not in mortals to command success, but we’ll do more, Sempronius, we’ll deserve it ...”

“... 1929. And there is something peculiarly attractive about his belief (expressed in a letter to Rab Butler) that Conservative MPs should refrain from accepting jobs in the City, since such openings were rarely available to Labour men. One slight oddity of Jenkins’s treatment is that while Baldwin earns his praise for buttressing the two-party ‘balance’ in ...”

“... necessary. She and a one-time maid, Patty, and Tom – illegitimate son of the Rollestons’ last butler – are left at Carriglas, The place that was once magical for her. And then, flagged in reminiscent italics: Dunadry Rectory, September 14th, 1904. ‘It came from Carriglas, Sarah,’ Mamma said when first I asked about the china on the sideboard ...”

“... at Caernarvon came immediately after the joint BBC/IBA film of the Royal Family at home. Anthony Holden suggests that, when watching the Investiture, people were more aware of the domestic than of the ceremonial aspect. He may have got it slightly wrong. It is the combination of the two which is fascinating: not the thought that the hero of the ...”

“... despite the aftermath of a major operation, was determined at almost all costs to prevent Mr R.A. Butler succeeding him. His illness would have given him every excuse to resign at once and proffer no advice to the Queen at all on such a matter. Constitutionally, he was not obliged to give it, and Bonar Law declined to do so in somewhat similar circumstances ...”

“... The state of play over the biographising of Anthony Eden is one of some interest. He offered the task to the late Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, author of many major books including a study of the Munich crisis and the official biography of George VI, who agreed on condition that he would not be expected to publish in Lord Avon’s lifetime ...”

“... good Tory’ clearly meant different things to biographer and subject. Macmillan’s rival, Rab Butler, chose a biographer from outside his own party, but his and Anthony Howard’s political outlooks may have been closer to each other than Mr Horne’s and Macmillan’s ‘not very good’ Toryisms. After an ...”

“... Halifax insist on taking his chaplain with him on honeymoon; the traditional morning call from the butler at his country seat of Hickleton also consisted of the murmured query ‘Tea or Eucharist, sir?’ In High and Mitred Bernard Palmer, the former editor of the Church Times, also evokes a lost world. His is a highly scholarly study of how Anglican bishops ...”

“... to comply with the impeachment inquiry. Pundits such as Roger Cohen of the New York Times and Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s short-lived director of communications (whose main achievement in life may be his name), say that all this is a form of madness, speculating that Trump is either carrying out a very public suicide or exhibiting some weird genius for ...”

“... armies waited for a verbal error With all the instruments for causing pain. Stevens, the elderly butler in Kazuo Ishiguro’s third novel, The Remains of the Day, would never be so vulgar as to price anyone’s shoes, but much of his earlier life was discreetly spent in the presence of substantial men exchanging views, at a time of momentous events between ...”

“... are mild and eager to please. He remained dauntless and daunting in politics. He despised Rab Butler for not having fought (he had a withered hand after a riding accident as a child), he sneered at Hugh Gaitskell for not having any medals to wear on Remembrance Day and he loathed Herbert Morrison, his first boss in the wartime coalition, for having been a ...”

“... having made the minimal consequential changes when he took over. ‘The answer is that Sir Anthony Eden has been dithering. He has made up his mind, changed it, made it up again, and changed it again. He has listened to advice and heeded pressures not merely up to the point of decision but far beyond it.’ Like Rosebery, another Foreign Secretary who ...”

“... that when the SDP was launched, it seemed that its initial success might prove its downfall. Anthony Downs, the leading academic exponent of the linear theory, argues that centre parties always get squeezed by those on their flanks. In Britain in 1981 the demonstration that there was such an eager market for a centrist position should surely have drawn ...”

“... Harold Macmillan’s judgment on Anthony Eden, that ‘he was trained to win the Derby in 1938; unfortunately, he was not let out of the starting stalls until 1955,’ was echoed by Anthony Nutting: ‘he had for too long been the Golden Boy of the Tory Party, the glamorous Crown Prince awaiting the summons to mount the throne in place of the ageing Emperor ...”