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“... It is customary to claim the idea of progress as one of the distinguishing features of Western civilisation: indeed the very success of the West is sometimes attributed to confidence in its own destiny in this respect. Its peculiar saving mission, that of liberating mankind by means of the creation of wealth, would make little sense without some underlying faith in the prospect, perhaps even the certainty, of limitless improvement ...”

“... the assumption that visions of national character are by nature multiple, variable and competing. Paul Langford begs to differ. In Englishness Identified, he admits that stereotypes of the English have often contradicted each other. The island race has been seen as alternately lazy and industrious, honest and hypocritical, polite and uncouth, taciturn ...”

“... agreeable thought to the new authors that their books will be selling deep into the 21st century. Paul Langford’s volume invites comparison with Basil Williams’s The Whig Supremacy, which appeared exactly fifty years ago. In many respects the new volume has the edge. It is quite beautifully produced, with some excellent illustrations and charming ...”

“... Press has been publishing Burke’s writings and speeches under the overall editorship of Paul Langford, the first systematically new edition since that compiled between 1792 and 1827. No one reading these genuinely engrossing volumes can doubt the calibre of Burke’s mind, the power of his language, or the enduring pungency of his political ...”

“... in 2011. The lengthy wait allows Marshall to pay sad tribute to the general editor of the series, Paul Langford, who died in 2015. Independently, Langford’s team and Bourke have wrought a major transformation in our appreciation of Burke. The scale and range of Burke’s activity, the fertility of his ideas and his ...”

“... to repeat the prewar practice of idealising the monarch through masques, the attempt fell flat, as Paul Hammond has explained. Dryden shared the unease that Hobbes and Sir William Davenant had expressed after the execution of Charles I about the destructive potential of ‘inspiration’, a quality that was now fatally associated with the ‘fanaticism’ of ...”

“... The publication of Bentham’s Collected Works is likely to produce more new or revised views than the publication of Burke’s Writings and Speeches: indeed, it has already done so. The Bentham project will also take longer, for the establishment of the text is a herculean task. Bentham left a vast archive of notes and of drafts and redrafts of works planned but not published ...”