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“... from elitism, has renamed itself ‘The People’s Choice’. To have a go at being the people’s Kenneth Baker, all you need to do is submit a fifty-word review of your favourite book – ‘be it a cookery book, thriller or biography’, which covers just about everything – before the end of October, and you could not only have a say in what’s ...”

“... Britain duly puts in a guest-appearance: Mrs Thatcher. The Ironised Maiden is in evidence, too, in Kenneth Baker’s anthology of verse parodies, Unauthorised Versions. But then Mr Baker is a Conservative politician, mainstream, main chance. Politically these are authorised versions. One of the entries, by Roger ...”

“... non-resignations can in many ways be as disgraceful as resignations. The leading figure here is Kenneth Baker, who perfected a theory about why he should slay as Home Secretary despite the succession of calamities that surrounded him, until he was eventually jettisoned by the Prime Minister after the 1992 election. Holding steadfastly to the view that ...”

“... of the Soviet Union. Earlier, on a visit to Moscow, the British Secretary of State for Education, Kenneth Baker, received from a group of Soviet historians a surprise proposal to organise a joint examination of Soviet history books with English historians, in order to improve the writing of Soviet history after so many years of toeing the Communist Party ...”

“... in the crown’. All sorts of ambitious Tories showed an interest in and support for the GLC. Kenneth Baker wrote a pamphlet demanding that the GLC become more of a ‘strategic authority for London’. Patrick Jenkin wrote in favour of the new Tory creation, and its expansion. Then, in 1981, Labour regained the GLC. It became clear at once that the ...”

“... is on his knees. Among the bull’s-eyes are Robin Day, Ian Paisley, David Owen, Douglas Hurd, Kenneth Baker, David Mellor, Alan Bennett. There are a few outers: Jonathan Miller, Stephen Spender, Alfred Brendel, Melvyn Bragg – but even in these he is good on the hair, which, according to Craig Brown, was what he always homed in on. Rosemary ...”

“... children and go into schools have been astonishingly foolish. We thought that others listening to Kenneth Baker’s pronouncements as they tumbled out before, during and after the election would be bound to doubt his wisdom and good faith. We thought that other people would laugh, too, at his picture of all those classrooms in ‘loony left’ boroughs ...”

“... it may be simply that he has had more time to accumulate form. The three men whom he followed – Kenneth Clarke, Kenneth Baker and David Waddington – together occupied the post for just a few months more than he has already served. Baker’s brief romp managed to produce two ...”

“... than, say, its waste-disposal system? The sentence in question comes from the introduction to Kenneth Baker’s anthology of ‘landscape poetry’; he does not pause to ponder its pitfalls. Indeed, there is much that Baker does not pause over, including the scope and title of his anthology. It is not, of ...”

“... It was not until the 1990s that a frontal challenge to the principle of legality was offered. Kenneth Baker, the home secretary, in breach of an undertaking given to the High Court, deported a Zairean asylum seeker and then ignored a court order to bring him back. On appeal to the House of Lords, an application on the asylum seeker’s behalf to have ...”

“... dying at Trafalgar on the cover and set off in search of a place where I might try again. Mr Baker’s anthology was on the best-seller list by the summer, when I took it down to Dorset and found the place where it would really come to life. Driving up from West Lulworth, I left behind the yellow fields of EEC oil seed rape and travelled up onto the ...”

“... which induces a note of caution. He puts the odds at three to one against and identifies smiling Kenneth Baker as the man from whom Heseltine has most to fear. About other possible contenders he is refreshingly frank. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, possessor of a ‘powerful intellect and a suitably bullying manner’, is just not well ...”

“... Hanson to the House of Lords in Thatcher’s farewell Honours List in 1991. In the same year, Kenneth Baker got a job on Hanson’s board. In the Thatcher years, Hanson felt he was part of the Government. He demanded and got an interview with Nigel Lawson in which he offered to buy the BP shares the Government were selling – for six billion ...”

“... authority: the result, an overwhelming endorsement of existing ILEA policies, should provide Kenneth Baker with plenty to think about. And for thousands of students there is, as always at this time of year, the pressure of public examinations. This tangled web of issues can be looked at through the prism of literature teaching. Since assessment is ...”

“... of abstinence and prayer. Bluewater’s anodyne aquarium walkways provoke many such dramas. The Kenneth Baker anthology of uplifting poems, in relief on every wall, incubates rage. I was ready to tear out the tablets with my fingernails and smash them down on the heads of inoffensive mall-grazers. A Tate Modern gallery of male underwear fails to excite ...”