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“... on the front page of the Daily Mail and was promoted as part of that paper’s ‘I’m Backing Britain’ campaign. Of ‘Now and Then’, Bernard Levin rather tastelessly observed, years later, that it ‘made many regret their impulsive rejoicing at the death of his predecessor’. Even Day Lewis’s admiring editor and close friend, ...”

“... it could be argued that the Aussies bring it on themselves, with their Barry McKenzies, their Ian Chappells, their self-parodying Foster ads, and so on. And there is the accent: for some reason more readily mimickable than any of our own regional twangs. Theories about the Australian accent are just as snooty as theories about Australia. Some say that it ...”

“... a very short story by Diane Williams which came into my mind while I was reading Machines like Me, Ian McEwan’s 15th novel. It’s called ‘Machinery’ and it’s 104 words long. It ends: ‘For some idea of the full range of tools at his disposal, one would have to know what human longings are all about, a calm voice says calmly.’ McEwan has always been ...”

“... of the world, widespread famine, crop disruption and civil unrest to Europe, dramatic sunsets to Britain and millennial thoughts to Byron, who ‘look’d up/With mad disquietude on the dull sky,/The pall of a past world … All earth was but one thought – and that was death.’ Nightmare visions of extinction and new forms of life, such as Byron’s and ...”

“... Britain emerged from the war still unquestionably a great power, its Prime Ministers Churchill and Attlee considered the equals in negotiations for the post-war settlement, of America’s Presidents Roosevelt and Truman and Soviet dictator Stalin at the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences of 1945. By any rational and objective criteria ...”

“... Party was fundamentally different in its basic structure to . . . any other political party in Britain or elsewhere.’ I doubt that any such assumption is involved, but in any case Green seems unaware that Oakeshott came near to making it, saying after the war that there was ‘nothing whatever in common between British Conservatism and any of the ...”

“... they either stayed bad or got worse. Nothing seemed to work. The quality of life declined, and Britain became increasingly like a Third World country. Foreign journalists were astonished by our huge reservoir of forbearance when faced with seemingly universal incompetence and perpetual failure. As calamity succeeded calamity, culminating in the outbreak of ...”

“... Ian Gilmour is a distinguished and highly intelligent example of a once rare species: he is a Conservative with a cause. Unfortunately for him, however – and perhaps for the rest of us as well – his cause is no longer that of the political party he has always espoused. The son of a baronet, he was born into Toryism in much the same way as Anthony Trollope’s Duke of Omnium was born to Whig Liberalism, passing through Eton, to Balliol, to marriage with a daughter of the Duke of Buccleuch, to the Bar, to safe Conservative seats in rural Norfolk and Buckinghamshire, and then on to cabinet rank, first as Secretary of Defence under Heath, and then as Lord Privy Seal and Deputy Foreign Secretary ...”

“... of the American aggression, the party would now be ideally placed to attack Blair for involving Britain in the Iraqi disaster. Duncan Smith soon proved so inadequate that in 2003 he had to be removed. The new system of electing a leader was far too damaging to be employed only two years before an election, and by a clever coup Michael Howard was installed ...”

“... States, and the extraordinary sums of money involved,1 were quickly followed by the prosecution in Britain of Michael Collier. Chairman of Morgan Grenfell, the largest securities firm in the City of London, for making an instantaneous profit of £15,000 on the purchase of shares in a company he knew was about to be taken over. A steady series of cases ...”

“... made it back home, but his son wondered if these soldiers had been as lucky, or ‘whether in Britain or South Africa or New Zealand there was someone who mourned when they failed to return’.The letters affected me similarly. Their contents are invariably mundane. It was dreary at home and there wasn’t much to report. All the excitement came from the ...”

“... In Britain, oppositions do not win general elections; the economy occasionally wins one for them. To prevent it doing so, governments in the second half of a Parliament devote much of their energy to ensuring that on election day the voters will feel prosperous and the economy look healthy. Such a political and economic miracle entails much dumping of dogma and convictions ...”

“... primarily a West End and small screen entertainer with his largest viewing constituency in Britain. The same – but more – could be said of Clive James. James has earned himself reputations as a television host, reviewer, newspaper columnist, songwriter, ‘metropolitan critic’, versifier and novelist (Brrm! Brrm! is his third published title). He ...”

“... For most of the last half-century, Britain has had two options: to be a whole-hearted member of Europe or to be a satellite of the United States. In this field there has been no ‘third way’. Full-hearted co-operation with Europe does not mean and never has meant the end of the Atlantic Alliance. The great majority of the countries in the European Union have always been members of Nato ...”

“... is the clogged main artery from New York to the Hamptons. When my family went on holiday in Britain in the 1970s, taking to the M1 in our M-reg Mini, car-spotting was something I did to pass the time. Now, when I drive my family along the LIE in our Volvo, I still keep an eye out for the unusual. I was pleased to score a Maybach, the $300,000-plus ...”