QUOTES by Linda Colley
Find most favourite and famour Authors from A.A Milne to Zoe Kravitz.
I write to relieve an intellectual itch. I stumble across a hitherto neglected set of events, transformations, characters, or source materials from the past, and they nag at me until I make sense of them in words. But I also write to seduce and to make my readers think.
Quote by -Linda Colley
Many Britons who backed Brexit believed - and believe still - that a U.K. 'freed' from 'Europe' would be able to recover and re-establish its historic destiny as an independent global trading nation.
Quote by -Linda Colley
A break-up of the U.K. would affect the deployment and strength of its armed forces and play havoc with the ownership of its overseas consulships and embassies.
Quote by -Linda Colley
In the U.S. - and elsewhere - successful parties need a storyline that voters can relate to, an intelligible plot of some sort, especially now that so many older, formal ideologies have lost force. For proof of this, one has only to look at Margaret Thatcher's career and ideas.
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Even leaving aside its military bases, America's influence on the domestic ordering of British life has been enormous, though sometimes unrecognised.
Quote by -Linda Colley
To be sure, political unions between European countries have often failed in the past, but usually only after relatively brief periods. Denmark and Iceland separated after 130 years; the unions between Spain and Portugal and between Sweden and Norway each lasted less than a century.
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High-level political wives are by no means new. In the 18th and 19th centuries, when patricians dominated British political life, it was common for politicians' spouses to play an active political role.
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Hillary Clinton is tough, clever, and formidably well briefed, and has been politically ambitious all her adult life.
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Many Americans remain very interested in royal goings-on in general, and not just because of their soap-opera appeal. To a greater degree than any other polity, Britain functions as Americans' defining 'other.'
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British prime ministers and prime ministers' spouses and children are together becoming ever more like first families. They need to be given sufficient resources and personnel to enable them to carry out their shifting roles efficiently, decently, and safely.
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Before they became Americans, most white inhabitants of the 13 colonies considered themselves British. It was predictable, therefore, that they would lust after empire, because this was exactly what their counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic also did.
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Once you know how completely and suddenly the earth can open up at your feet and the worst can happen, it also, paradoxically, leaves you more afraid of everything else.
Quote by -Linda Colley
Look at how the British covered India with railroads, and it is easy to view them as modernisers. Look, however, at the abysmal levels of mass illiteracy in the subcontinent they left behind in 1947, and they appear rather differently.
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In Britain, British history is naturally a mainstream subject. Step outside your own narrow specialism, and you can find yourself treading on someone else's toes. But in America, British history is an eccentric, minority pursuit, and while this can be intellectually isolating, it also permits extraordinary freedom.
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I was born and spent my first five years in Chester, an ancient city that retains some of its Roman walls and fortifications and contains a great medieval cathedral, as well as Tudor, Stuart and early 19th century architecture. Visiting these things was free, and my parents - who had little money - made the most of this.
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Traditionally, royal females who have not had the luck to become queens regnant have been granted very limited roles. They have been expected to look pretty, be discreet, do charitable good deeds, and - if married to princes or kings - be quietly supportive and, above all, fertile.
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Globalisation is not remotely new; it has been occurring, at differing rates and with differing degrees of scale, for centuries.
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The so-called Boer War advertised British vulnerabilities, and these were confirmed by the Irish rising of 1916 and the subsequent creation of the Irish Free State, blows that attracted the notice and attention of colonial dissidents in Asia and Africa.
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The American revolution not only cost Britain the 13 colonies but also forced it to rethink the slave trade and slavery, and influenced its power relations in Asia and the Pacific.
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The argument that any income redistribution is tantamount to socialism, and that socialism has always been unAmerican, has helped legitimise keeping taxes on America's very wealthy very low.
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Since the Second World War, as female expectations and opportunities have risen, becoming a royal woman - and remaining a royal woman - has seemed less and less an attractive proposition.
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A vital part of Trump's appeal was his promise to make America emphatically great again, staunching the haemorrhage of jobs and investment to China and Mexico, and cutting back on handouts to NATO and illegal migrants.
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Embarking upon war is always dangerous for national leaders because it makes them more than ever at the mercy of events. When domestic opinion is acutely divided, however, war can be politically lethal for its makers.
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Margaret Thatcher's decision to use Scotland as a testing ground for the poll tax was arguably the most disastrous attempt at fiscal engineering since London slapped the stamp tax on the American colonies in the 1760s.
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Many of the Victorian and Edwardian activists who campaigned for Irish home rule, for instance, also wanted what they called 'home rule all round': separate parliaments not simply for Ireland but also for the Scots and the Welsh - and for the English.
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It is hard to convince people that you mean them well if you are looking at them down the barrel of a gun.
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One of the benefits of working outside the U.K. is that I don't have to keep fielding media/politicians' enquiries about 'Britishness' and its ills.
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Instead of exporting what they perceived to be rational, modern, humane government to their colonies, the British often found themselves propping up deeply unattractive and corrupt princelings and client rulers because this was the cheapest way of maintaining control.
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For many on the Right, America is to be routinely celebrated because it stands for free enterprise and global power; for many on the Left, America merits perpetual suspicion and censure for the self-same reasons.
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Although England, and the rest of the United Kingdom, possesses momentous constitutional texts and significant statutes, since the 1600s there has been no systematic attempt to codify the powers and limits of the British executive and the rights of those it governs.
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In the past, the imperialism of the West, like that of the rest, was often difficult - for the doers as well as for their victims - but western states were, nonetheless, usually able to dispatch forces overseas against non-western peoples without any fear of being attacked themselves. That kind of immunity is probably now a thing of the past.
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As Ronald Reagan demonstrated, it is still possible to progress if not from a log cabin at least from obscurity to the White House. It is also rare.
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Postcolonial critics are, I suspect, wrong when they argue that the mass of British people still mourn the loss of empire. But Britain's politicians - and its Foreign Office - have found it hard to adjust to the loss, not so much of onetime colonies as of the global clout the colonies once afforded.
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It was hardly their own shining abilities alone that allowed a son, two grandsons, and a son-in-law of Winston Churchill to make their way into parliament.
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If you believe you are the city on the hill, the world's best hope, it is tempting also to believe that outside your boundaries are barbarians.
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Historically, individuals possessed of the confidence that privilege and good fortune bestow have often proved conspicuous reformers: think only of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
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The British especially have no excuse for forgetting that empire is a most complex and persistent beast. And it has claws.
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Historically, religion has often proved a more lethal and more divisive force than any secular ideology. It has also often been a more divisive force than race.
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Irrespective of their party affiliation or wishes on the matter, those governing from 10 Downing Street now have to take on much of the aura and role of head of state. And this is bound to have heavy consequences for their family.
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There can never be a single, satisfactory comprehensive account of the 'history of the British empire.'
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Any kind of new U.K. federal system would almost certainly demand the creation of a written constitution. Properly drafted, such a document could, among many things, pin down more effectively the proper dimensions of prime ministerial power.
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Never fly to the U.S. the day before Thanksgiving or the weekend after because every airport is guaranteed to be crammed to bursting with people in transit to, or from, their home town.
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In the 16th and 17th centuries, most people in Britain lived in small village communities. They knew all their neighbours. They dressed alike, and almost all were white. The vast majority belonged to the same religion and spoke much the same language.
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States that have experienced revolutions or have acquired their independence from empires - such as the U.S. or Australia - tend to celebrate their constitutional documents and put them on show in special galleries so that every citizen can become familiar with them. In the U.K., this is not properly done.
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Too close and unthinking an allegiance to Washington has sometimes got British governments into trouble.
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Much of how Americans have always understood their history, culture, and identity depends on positioning Europe as the 'other,' as that 'old world' against which they define themselves.
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Now, as in the past, rank is closely associated with modes of representation and display: with making an ordered arrangement of people or things visible and evident to onlookers in some fashion.
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Monarchs, aristocrats, and other powerful and wealthy individuals have usually been happy to have themselves and their possessions and families immortalised in oil paintings and sculpture. But before the 20th century, such dynasts rarely commissioned artworks that set out to represent society as a whole.
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