The most stirring battle-poem in English is about a brigade of cavalry which charged in the wrong direction. — George Orwell Copy Share Image
We, while noting many things amiss about Victorian society, more often sense them judging us. — A. N. Wilson 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
The black presence in our British history has sometimes wilfully, sometimes neglectfully, been whitewashed out of our national tale. — Paterson Joseph Copy Share Image
We fight to exist. Personally, I am not ashamed of fighting to exist. We are doing no very extraordinary thing to fight… — Donald Woods Winnicott 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
At one level Great Britain at the beginning of the 18th century was like the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, both three… — Linda Colley 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
Prince Charles's concern for the underprivileged and disadvantaged has not exactly endeared him to the Conservative Central Office. As Norman Tebbit replied,… — David Cannadine Copy Share Image
In Britain, British history is naturally a mainstream subject. Step outside your own narrow specialism, and you can find yourself treading on… — Linda Colley Copy Share Image
Vernon Bogdanor's account The Monarchy and the Constitution is written as much in the shadow of Edmund Burke as it is of… — David Cannadine Copy Share Image
Armed Soldier, terrible as Death, relentless as Doom; doing God's judgement on the Enemies of God. It is a phenomenon not of… — Thomas Carlyle 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
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
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
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
Human beings are many-layered creatures, and do not succumb to the hegemony of others as easily as historians and politicians sometimes imply.… — Linda Colley 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
Of all the memorable phrases that have been minted and mobilised to describe modern British royalty, 'constitutional monarchy' is virtually the only… — David Cannadine Copy Share Image
More attention should have been given to the fundamental transformation which took place during Queen Victoria's reign, from ruling sovereign to constitutional… — David Cannadine Copy Share Image
England totally disarmed and an easy prey to hostile forces! Can you think of anything more likely to excite cupidity and hostile… — Stanley Baldwin Copy Share Image
I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the… — Neville Chamberlain Copy Share Image
A country scratching a lazy irritation at sagging doorjambs and late trains, whose greatest attribute is a collective, smelly tolerance, where a… — A. A. Gill Copy Share Image
Compare the scale and magnifcence of Versailles with St James's - the brick-built hovel in which the 18th-century kings of England lived.… — David Starkey Copy Share Image
“The Royal Navy had not built its magnificent reputation over the centuries by avoiding battle.” — Arthur Nicholson Copy Share Image
You have sat too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you.… — Oliver Cromwell 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
“Then you are no longer afraid of death, Your Majesty?” the lady asked, awed at the queen’s adventures. “No, I am no… — Constance Jagodzinski 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
An unprecedented number of uniformed males, marching, parading and engaging in mock battles in every region of Great Britain brought a pleasant… — Linda Colley Copy Share Image
In the last quarter of the 20th century, Britons have been understandably obsessed with the problem of having too little power in… — Linda Colley Copy Share Image
The Victorians pioneered numbers of commercial rackets about which their descendants complain (the manufacturers of Bovril, it appears, were virtually official sponsors… — D. J. Taylor Copy Share Image
The Windrush era is a very important part of British history as it helps us understand how and why we became the… — Naomie Harris 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
