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“... As the sullen summer of ’81 ends, we know that we shall remember it for images of violence: a soldier writhing aflame on the streets of Belfast, rioters on British streets using petrol bombs, and two images of the British bobby – bruised and frightened men cowering in a blinded phalanx under riot shields, and the kicked-in doors and sore heads of Railton Road ...”

“... When a young man who has thrust himself to the centre of the political stage writes a book on politics, he will suffer the condescension of his seniors, the condemnation of his critics, and the faint sniggers of academics offstage. David Owen has had his prescription for Britain patronised by Grimond and Powell, dissected by Ken Coates, and treated like a first-year undergraduate’s essay by Professor Peter Townsend ...”

“... Great parties are born and not made, and they endure for a long time. The Labour Party came into existence less than eighty years ago. With the tumult of Brighton scarcely over, it may seem unfair to ask if it is still, and can continue to be, a mass party. A party, that is, which has a large and enthusiastic membership of individuals, agreed on the road they are taking even if they differ about the speed of the journey; a party with an accepted forum for debating, refining and presenting policy, enabling it to look outward both to the domestic electorate and to fellow socialist parties abroad ...”

“... one catastrophe and the next. But the Seventies had no separate identity. Recognising this, Phillip Whitehead begins his book – written to accompany the Channel 4 series of the same name – with the euphoria of Harold Wilson’s victory in 1964. He ends in 1981 with the ‘drying-out of the wets’ by Mrs Thatcher in her autumn reshuffle. The ...”

“... obstinate, he had the intelligence to turn away from the cliff-edge. Conversely, David Walker and Phillip Whitehead do nothing to rescue the reputation of Lord Wilson, and it’s hard to believe anyone will ever treat the last six months of Jim Callaghan’s Government with anything resembling sympathy. Time and detachment may eventually diminish the ...”