Their chief achievement was to leave them, as they found them, unmistakably Greek

The Venetians left the Ionians peacefully if in obloquy, pushed out by Napoleon, and their place was presently taken by the British, whose manners were not dissimilar and whose intentions towards the islands were much the same. When, in their turn, the British voluntarily left in 1864, the islands became the most cultivated and progressive parts of the new Greece, and for this the Venetians could properly claim credit. They had ruled the Ionians for four centuries, and their chief achievement was to leave them, as they found them, unmistakably Greek.

J. Morris, The Venetian Empire (1980), 152

Heavy drinking has always been part of the British character

Heavy drinking has always been part of the British character – and one that has differentiated the inhabitants of these islands from their neighbours on the Continent of Europe. The eighth century missionary and reformer Saint Boniface had been born in Devon but spent most of his life working on the Continent. In his old age he wrote to the Cuthbert, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in which he referred to a report that ‘In your dioceses the vice of drunkenness is too frequent. This is an evil peculiar to pagans and our race. Neither the Franks not the Gauls nor the Lombards nor the Romans nor the Greeks commit it.’

A. Barr, Drink: a social history (1995), 25

It is hard to recall today how robust and energetic London was in the 1980s in standing up for the rights of Central European intellectuals

It is hard to recall today how robust and energetic London was in the 1980s in standing up for the rights of Central European intellectuals who were largely ignored by the other European states. The West Germans did not want to rock the boat of their relations with the East Germans. The French were reluctant to speak out in case it damaged their 'special relationship' with Moscow. The Italians and Spanish preferred to focus on commercial interests. In Europe, only London resolutely and consistently defended the human rights of the subject populations of the Soviet Empire.   

R. Bassett, Last days in old Europe (2019), 112-13

Cod, haddock, tuna, salmon and prawns make up 60-70% of the seafood eaten in the UK

Despite its island credentials, Britain - bafflingly - is not known as a nation enamoured of fish, other than its favourite, battered, deep-fried 'fish and chips' form. Despite the variety found off our coasts, our consumption centres on only five main species: cod, haddock, tuna, salmon and prawns make up 60-70% of the seafood eaten in the UK.

J. Linford, The missing ingredient (2018), 64 

Defence of private enterprise, private ownership and order are the only enduring Tory positions

The tory party have often been seen as a party of consistent ideology and as defenders of core principles and interests. I am never convinced by this argument. What is remarkable about the Conservatives is not their ideological or interest tenacity, but their willingness to jettison positions which no longer appeal: laissez-faire, the House of Lords, the Union with all Ireland, the empire, have all been abandoned when it suited the party, as to some extent have been the monarchy, the Church of England and the agricultural interest. Defence of private enterprise, private ownership and order are the only enduring Tory positions.

A. Seldon (ed.), How Tory governments fall (1996), 18 

Only to discover, when it was too late, that they had practically destroyed the British Army

For years Pitt and Dundas continued to pour men and money into the West Indies against what they were pleased to call brigands. Helped by the climate, the black labourers so recently slaves, and the loyal Mulattoes, led by their own officers, inflicted on Britain the severest defeat that has befallen a British expeditionary force between the days of Elizabeth and the Great War. The full story remained hidden for over a century, until it was unearthed in 1906 by Fortescue, the historian of the British Army. He puts the blame on Pitt and Dundas "who had full warning that on this occasion they would have to fight not only poor, sickly Frenchmen, but the Negro population of the West Indies. Yet they poured their troops into these pestilent islands, in the expectation that thereby they would destroy the power of France, only to discover, when it was too late, that they had practically destroyed the British Army.

....

By the end of 1796, after three years of war, the British had lost in the West Indies 80,000 soldiers including 40,000 actually dead, the latter number exceeding the total losses of Wellington's army from death, discharges, desertion and all causes from the beginning to the end of the Peninsular War. The cost in San Domingo alone had been £300,000 in 1794, £800,000 in 1795, £2,600,000 in 1796, and in January 1797 alone it was more than £700,000. Early in 1797 the British Government decided to withdraw and maintain control only of Mole St Nicholas and the island of Tortuga

C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins (1938, 2001 edition), 118-9 and 164

In Hindostan, what must be the astonishment of the natives to find that we are forbidden to rob, murder, and steal;

'Let us ask, too, if the Bible is universally diffused in Hindostan, what must be the astonishment of the natives to find that we are forbidden to rob, murder, and steal; we who, in fifty years, have extended our empire from a few acres about Madras, over the whole peninsula, and sixty millions of people, and exemplified in our public conduct every crime of which human nature is capable.' 

H. Pearson, The Smith of Smiths (1934), 76

Two peoples living in a small country hating each other like hell

The British realised, however, that they had burdened themselves with an insoluble problem. ‘The problem of Palestine,’ wrote Britain’s most senior general, ‘[was] the same as the problem of Ireland, namely, two peoples living in a small country hating each other like hell.’ Nor were the Jews showing the gratitude the British expected of them. When the director of military intelligence visited Palestine soon after the riots, it dawned on him that there was no reason to suppose that the Zionists and British would ever be ‘really friendly’. The friendship would ‘only last as long as the Zionist State were dependent on Great Britain for military protection’, he realised. This was an insight that would prove acute.

J. Barr, A Line in the sand (2011), loc. 1,670

The real danger today is from that fat, adolescent and delinquent millionaire, America

It does not seem to me that the English can do much harm to anybody today. After a long career of subduing savages in distant lands they discovered the most dangerous savage of all just across the English Channel and took him on and brought him to heel. But the effort proved too great and the cost too high, and although they acquitted themselves with honour they made sure that they would not be called upon to do it again. And so they anointed the hero of their dazzling feat the greatest Englishman who ever lived, dumped him at the polls and voted Clement Attlee in. Whatever fear the ghost of British imperial vocation may still hold over the world’s little people was finally removed when a renegade Englishman and his little band of thugs seized Her Majesty’s colony in Rhodesia and held it for thirteen years. No, the English have, for all practical purposes, ceased to menace the world. The real danger today is from that fat, adolescent and delinquent millionaire, America, and from all those virulent, misshapen freaks like Amin and Bokassa sired on Africa by Europe. Particularly those ones.

C. Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah (1987), 47

Nobody could sing and nobody could write and, in any case, nobody gave a damn

British pop in the fifties was pure farce.

Nobody could sing and nobody could write and, in any case, nobody gave a damn. The industry surivuved in a state of perpetual self-styled hysteria, screaming itself hoarse about nothing in particular.

N. Cohn, Awopbopaloobop, Awopamboom (1969), 54

Americans would eventually get to share most of the advantages of Britain’s forced opening of China’s ports without any of the violence

As for the American traders at Canton, in some ways they were the war’s greatest beneficiaries, for they would eventually get to share most of the advantages of Britain’s forced opening of China’s ports without any of the violence or the lasting stain on their national character.

S. R. Platt, Imperial Twilight (2018), 416

As much as one-tenth of Britain’s national revenue derived from the trade at Canton

The [East India] Company’s income from the China trade was completely swamping its revenues from India: in the first decade of the 1800s, the imports from Canton provided two-thirds of the entire sales income of the East India Company in London. By the latter part of that decade the China portion of its trade was bringing in record profits while the India trade operated in some years at a net loss. The effect was, first, to create a huge increase in the government’s tax revenue from the China trade—to the point that by some estimates as much as one-tenth of Britain’s national revenue derived from the trade at Canton. By corollary, the growing reliance of the British government on its tax revenues from the Company’s tea also meant that the stability of affairs in Canton became a matter of serious national interest. Any interruption to the China trade could interfere with Britain’s ability to finance its war. 

S. R. Platt, Imperial Twilight (2018), 88-89

You may not want to spend too many years of your life here, but as you see it in the early 1830s, Canton hardly seems the kind of place to start a war.

The entire formal trade of Europe and America with China, the largest empire in existence, goes on here in a space of just twelve acres — less, some like to point out, than the footprint of one of the pyramids in Egypt. You may not want to spend too many years of your life here, but as you see it in the early 1830s, Canton hardly seems the kind of place to start a war. 

No event casts a longer shadow over China’s modern history than the Opium War. Sparked by an explosive series of events that took place in the Canton factory compound in 1839, the war would end in 1842 with China’s humiliating defeat and a treaty all but dictated by the British aggressors, setting a disastrous pattern for the century to come. Textbooks in China on “modern” history, as a rule, take the Opium War as their starting point, the moment when China left its traditional past behind and was dragged forcibly into the world of European imperialism. The war occupies that place not because it was so destructive; in fact, it was relatively small and contained. It caused none of the large-scale social dislocation that China’s major internal wars of the nineteenth century like the Taiping Rebellion did. It did not topple the ruling dynasty or even remotely threaten to do so. There weren’t even that many battles fought.

But the symbolic power of the Opium War if almost limitless. It has long stood as the point where China's weakness was laid bare before the world, the opening of a "Century of Humiliation".

S. R. Platt, Imperial Twilight (2018), xxi-xxii

The unfortunate tendency to revert to the idea of the 'Establishment' as a central feature of British society and government

In the early twenty-first century, the old aristocratic, landed, upper class is a thing of the past. We need to insist on this, given the unfortunate tendency to revert to the idea of the 'Establishment' as a central feature of British society and governance.

M. Savage, Social Class in the 21st Century (2015), 307

The final self-effacing gesture of one whose lifetime's single aim, as Princess and as Queen, had been to serve the British Throne.

The New Year, 1953, was that of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Queen Mary who drove out in Hyde Park in February to look at the stands being erected along the processional route, let it be known at Buckingham Palace that, should she no longer be there to attend the Coronation, this solemnity must on no account of mourning be postponed. This, we may think, was the final self-effacing gesture of one whose lifetime's single aim, as Princess and as Queen, had been to serve the British Throne.

J . Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary (1959), 620-1

The fact that dutiful, righteous, Jacobites kept on failing to overthrow selfish, evil Whigs was thus an implicit paradox within the mental world of Jacobitism

The fact that dutiful, righteous, Jacobites kept on failing to overthrow selfish, evil Whigs was thus an implicit paradox within the mental world of Jacobitism. If they could not somehow resolve it they were liable to doubt God's blessing upon their cause. And without his blessing their opposition to the status quo in the British Isles was nothing more than an egregious sin.

D. Szechi, 'The long shadow of 1715. The great Jacobite rebellion in Scots Jacobite politics and memory - a preliminary analysis', Royal Stuart Journal 7 (2016), 24

Jewish refugees from Portugal and Spain ... introduced Britain to the street food that would become their national dish - fish fried in flour

We might think the great double act fish and chips is as British as Torvill and Dean, Morecambe and Wise or wind and rain. But in fact it was Jewish refugees from Portugal and Spain, arriving in the seventeenth century, who introduced Britain to the street food that would become their national dish - fish fried in flour. It was French and Belgian Huguenots, coming shortly afterwards, who introduced fried potatoes in the form of frites. What the British did was bring the two together. And what led to the duo becoming a legend was the Industrial Revolution.

V. Franklin and A. Johnson, Menus that made history (2019), 38

The generation gap, meanwhile, appeared to be a myth

[In 1969] All social groups, rich and poor, young and old, agreed that there was 'too much publicity given to sex', that 'murderers ought to be hanged' and, by an enormous margin, there were 'too many coloured immigrants in the country now'. The generation gap, meanwhile, appeared to be a myth. In a stunning refutation of the simplistic identification of young people with political progressivism, two-thirds of young people between sixteen and twenty-four agreed that hanging should be brought back, while hostility to coloured immigrants was even stronger among the young than among pensioners.

D. Sandbrook, White Heat (2006), 199

Later (p. 681), Sandbrook observes 74% of the country later agreed with Powell's Rivers of blood speech.

Why would you drink like a prissy prancing mellifluous child of Dionysus in the vineyards of antiquity

We [the British] drink like this because we can, because it's our birthright, it's our heritage, our history, our myth and legend. Why would you drink like a prissy prancing mellifluous child of Dionysus in the vineyards of antiquity when you could bellow obscene songs in the mead halls of Asgard? We are the chilly, sweaty drunks of the north, of the long nights. We drink in the dark of the flickering shadows, not in the sunny, blue-hued shade of the south. We drink like this because we fucking can.

A.A. Gill, Pour me (2015), 16-17

Like a lot of A.A. Gill's memoir, this doesn't really stand analysis, but it's a great passage.

Two powerful forces of enlightenment - television and general mobility

Peering back into the 1940s, it is difficult to realize how deeply polarized society was then - even for one who was around at the time and exposed to its stringent rules and assumptions. There is a fair amount of mutual ignorance today between city and country, but it is tempered by two powerful forces of enlightenment - television and general mobility. The sight, sound and function of the countryside are familiar to all, if only through the windows of a car or as the backdrop to some news item or rural drama series.

P. Lively, A House unlocked (2001), 36