There is a golden thread which runs through British history of the individual, standing firm against tyranny and then of the individual… — Gordon Brown Copy Share Image
He had done that which could never be forgiven; he was in the grasp of one who never forgave. — Thomas B. Macaulay Copy Share Image
The irony about Charles II is not that he came to the throne because England needed a successor to Charles I, but… — Simon Schama Copy Share Image
The highest eulogy which can be pronounced on the Revolution of 1688 is this that this was our last Revolution. — Thomas B. Macaulay Copy Share Image
Labour leaders lead us all, though we know they bleed us all. Cheer our new Decline and Fall, Gibbon might have dreamed… — Noel Coward Copy Share Image
We, while noting many things amiss about Victorian society, more often sense them judging us. — A. N. Wilson Copy Share Image
The most stirring battle-poem in English is about a brigade of cavalry which charged in the wrong direction. — George Orwell Copy Share Image
Those Victorians: endlessly fascinating, broad in their learning, heroic in their achievements, in parts completely mad. — Simon Heffer Copy Share Image
Virtually every war fought since the Act of Union had gone badly at some stage, but before 1783 none had ended in… — Linda Colley Copy Share Image
“Redmond Howard, a politically aware witness to the Rising and a critic of the rebels, wrote in its aftermath: 'There never was,… — Tim Pat Coogan Copy Share Image
A British imperium enabled Scots to feel themselves peers of the Ebglish in a way still denied them in an island kingdom.… — Linda Colley Copy Share Image
“Who said the British empire was gone?! When I travel around the world and see and hear the English language everywhere, I… — Mouloud Benzadi Copy Share Image
Loyal and substansial Catholic service on the battlefield undermined one of the most longstanding objections to emancipation: namely, that since Catholics owed… — Linda Colley Copy Share Image
Can it be entirely accidental that the most famous fictional spy of them all, James Bond, Number 007, deadly marksman, intriguer, the… — Linda Colley Copy Share Image
Yes, making mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep... For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that an' Chuck him out,… — Rudyard Kipling Copy Share Image
Contrary to received wisdom, the British are not an insular people in the conventional sense - far from it. For most of… — Linda Colley Copy Share Image
For those who reject it, the Victorian experience is something to feel embarrassed about, to apologise for, to escape from, and never… — David Cannadine Copy Share Image
Out of the chaos of post-Roman Dark Age Britain, the English had created the world's first nation-state: One king, one country, one… — David Starkey Copy Share Image
“The period of which I write was an overshadowed one in British history, and especially in the history of the northern provinces.… — Charlotte Brontë Copy Share Image
Most Britons still lived and died without encountering anyone whose skin colour was different from their own. Slaves, in short, did not… — Linda Colley Copy Share Image
Disraeli was now at the height of his fame and popularity. He still had his enemies... But the people as a whole… — Christopher Hibbert Copy Share Image
Royal relationships across the generations have often been strained and distant, rather than close and affectionate. Most eldest sons, interminably waiting to… — David Cannadine Copy Share Image
Cruel and paradoxical though it undoubtedly is, the record shows that yje most succesful 20th century monarchs have been those who were… — David Cannadine Copy Share Image
There are important arguments to be made about the relative merits of an hereditary or an elected head of state: but not… — David Cannadine Copy Share Image
Black history is a series of missing chapters from British history. I'm trying to put those bits back in. — David Olusoga Copy Share Image
The male clerk with his quill pen and copper-plate handwriting had gone for good. The female short-hand typist took his place. It… — A. J. P. Taylor Copy Share Image
I went back in British history. Some 204 people died there after a mine collapsed in 1838. In 1866, 361 miners died… — Recep Tayyip Erdogan Copy Share Image
There was no more dangerous a time in a nation's life than the passing of a ruler when the succession was in… — Leanda de Lisle Copy Share Image
I knew a bit but we don't study a lot of British history at school in Australia. We have our own 50-year… — Eric Bana Copy Share Image
The Germans could not get over the perfidy of it. It was unbelievable that the English, having degenerated to the stage where… — Barbara Tuchman Copy Share Image
No medieval monarch in the whole of British history ever had such power as every modern British Prime Minister has in his… — Tony Benn Copy Share Image
A fundamental reason why Britain was not torn apart by civil war after 1688 was that its inhabitants' aggression was channelled so… — Linda Colley Copy Share Image
David Irving has consistenly applied an evidential double standard, demanding absolute documentary proof to convict the Germans (as when he sought to… — David Cannadine Copy Share Image
To collude in the minimisation of British history on the grounds of its imagined irrelevance to our rebranded national future, or from… — Simon Schama Copy Share Image
It is impossible not to be moved by the verve, courage and elan with Churchill attacked his last and ultimately invincible enemy,… — David Cannadine Copy Share Image
In 1688 England contracted to the Netherlands the highest debt that one nation can owe to another. Herself not knowing how to… — George Bancroft Copy Share Image
For Henry James, class was 'the essentially hierarchial plan of English society' which was 'the great and ever-present fact to the mind… — David Cannadine Copy Share Image
England will still be England, an everlasting animal, stretching into the future and the past and like all living things having the… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
From the 15th century to 1688, England and Wales, like Scotland, had been peripheral kingdoms in the European power game, more often… — Linda Colley Copy Share Image
Egyptologists, skilled in piecing together the papyri of lost civilisations, suddenly discovered that the same talent could be applied to working out… — Robert Harris Copy Share Image
