A biography for Linda Colleyhasn’t been written yet.
“The immediate impact of British imperial free-trading was often the collapse of local indigenous industries which were in no position to compete, and a consequent destruction of livelihoods and communities.”
“Acts of violence against one's own countrymen that are legitimated by religion are not new. Nor have such acts been unique to Islam.”
“Hillary Clinton is tough, clever, and formidably well briefed, and has been politically ambitious all her adult life.”
“In both British and American history, fervent imperialism has always coexisted with bouts of fierce isolationism.”
“Too close and unthinking an allegiance to Washington has sometimes got British governments into trouble.”
“Even at its most powerful, Britain always needed alliances with other European states. There would almost certainly have been no British victory at Waterloo, for instance, without the assistance of Prussia.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Like the proverbial elephant in the room, American anti-Europeanism has loomed large for so long that few trouble to notice it.”
“In 21st-century America, as in Georgian Britain, elections are raucous, flamboyant, flag-waving, expensive, and sometimes ramshackle things.”
“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.”
“The gulf between imperial ideals and empire on the ground has customarily proved disillusioning not only for colonial peoples but also for some in the occupying power.”
“Britain, like other European states, is not and never will again be in the top-world-power league, so its male leaders can afford to play subtler, more variegated roles. Leaders of the U.S. don't have that option.”
“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.”
“In the U.S., highly selective renditions of its history have served in practice to impose blinkers on some of its citizens and catered to vested interests.”
“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.”
“American prejudices about Europe rarely surface in headlines, but they are real, pervasive, and ingrained.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”