Wednesday, 12 February 2020

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

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The fact that dutiful, righteous, Jacobites kept on failing to overthrow selfish, evil Whigs was thus an implicit paradox within the mental ...
Tuesday, 4 February 2020

They inflicted their mid-life crises on the nation

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He [Ernest Maples] was among that dangerous generation of public servants who found themselves middle aged at the time of the 'youthqua...
Sunday, 26 January 2020

My parents were forced to abandon their home. They didn't make a fuss about it, but that is what happened.

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I am wary of the word exile, which is overused and romanticised. My parents were forced to abandon their home. They didn't make a fuss a...
Saturday, 25 January 2020

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

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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 wa...
Friday, 24 January 2020

Hunting can't be justified ... yet they are all good things

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in July 1997 he [Runciman] fell into conversation with James Lees-Milne on the subject of the recently elected New Labour administration: ...
Thursday, 23 January 2020

I fear I should never be a success at Oxford ... I should never talk or drink enough

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'I fear I should never be a success at Oxford ... I should never talk or drink enough.' However, by the post-war period, Cambridge w...
Wednesday, 22 January 2020

'Can you write the King's English?' ... 'That is almost my only qualification.'

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Almost all the history dons had served in at least one of the world wars, whether as soldiers or spies. For some, like Karl Leyser, the seni...