“The Royal Navy had not built its magnificent reputation over the centuries by avoiding battle.” — Arthur Nicholson Copy Share Image
In Great Britain, woman was subordinate and confined. But at least she was also safe. — Linda Colley Copy Share Image
Jews show so near an affinity to you... Where is your Christianity if you do not believe in their Judaism? — Benjamin Disraeli Copy Share Image
Nine English traditions out of ten date from the latter half of the nineteenth century. — C.P. Snow Copy Share Image
The strength and vitality of an empire is frequently due to the new aristocracy from the periphery. — Ronald Syme Copy Share Image
We, while noting many things amiss about Victorian society, more often sense them judging us. — A. N. Wilson Copy Share Image
Charles was constitutionally incapable of being a constitutional monarch. — Simon Schama Copy Share Image
In the end, history, especially British history with its succession of thrilling illuminations, should be, as all her most accomplished narrators have… — Simon Schama Copy Share Image
We can find common qualities and common values that have made Britain the country it is. Our belief in tolerance and liberty… — Gordon Brown Copy Share Image
The unweary, unostentatious, and inglorious crusade of England against slavery may probably be regarded as among the three or four perfectly virtuous… — William Edward Hartpole Lecky Copy Share Image
No people in the world other than the English would have had the courage, in the midst of war, to tell the… — Anton Walbrook 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
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
If there is a single trait in our character that has historically set us apart from other nations, it is our determination… — Billy Bragg 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
There is little doubt that, until 1846 when he helped to engineer the resignation of Robert Peel, Disraeli was driven by an… — Christopher Hibbert 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
For all her active goodness, Florence Nightingale herself was far from being the angelic figure of popular adulation: according to Lytton Strachey's… — David Cannadine Copy Share Image
As well as might we say that a ship is built, loaded and manned for the sake of any particular pilot, instead… — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke Copy Share Image
Almost everywhere else in Europe, the more military the state, the stronger the king - except in Britain. Here it was parliament,… — Simon Schama Copy Share Image
Much of the world today, including the United States, is still living in the social, cultural, and political aftermath of Britain's cultural… — Thomas Sowell 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
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
Ever since the Reformation, the case of legislation confining Catholics had been constructed primarily to protect a nervously Protestant against what was… — Linda Colley 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
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 is no other Parliament like the English. For the ordinary man, elected to any senate, from Perisa to Peru, they may… — Josiah Wedgwood Copy Share Image
Taxation, the very thing that had triggered the British civil wars, would do so again, this time in America. The taxes may… — Simon Schama Copy Share Image
Lord Beaverbrook was fundamentally a lonely man, with a low sense of his own self-worth, who was incapable of forming a stable,… — David Cannadine Copy Share Image
Like sex, poverty and power, suicide may always be with us. But like them again, the actual form is takes is essentially… — David Cannadine Copy Share Image
“Gower is the first English writer to use "history" as an English word. He regularly rhymes the term with "memory," for to… — Russell A. Peck 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
I was born a Scotsman and a bare one. Therefore I was born to fight my way in the world. — Walter Scott 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
