“His personal success, combined with his surfeit of self-confidence and shortage of charm, had multiplied his enemies and soon they began to mobilize against him.”
Source: The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown
“He warned his pious daughter Bridget of the dangers of self-criticism and the overwhelming importance of love.”
Source: The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown
“Taken on his own terms he had an intense integrity rare among rulers; he seldom acted for personal profit and almost always did what he believed to be best for others.”
Source: The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown
“A year had not changed Monck's view that once you had decided on a course of action, even if with reluctance, it paid to espouse it with enthusiasm.”
Source: The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown
“Another change which had been brought about by the 1650s and could not be undone was public interest in news, current affairs and political debate.”
Source: The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown
“I mean, who even are the English? The descendants of the Germanic tribes? We're a great hotchpotch really, aren't we? A mishmash of Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans, et cetera, et cetera, to a complicatedly hybrid ancestry, barely united for centuries, and our borders always shifting. We're not a pure, homogenous race sprung from English soil, are we? When people talk about Englishness, I often get a whiff of frowsty Victorian velvet," she mused, articulating more expansively with her hands as she warmed to her theme. "It makes me think of paintings of King Alfred, Ivanhoe and Tennyson, people putting on dressing-up clothes to do archery, and William Morris tapestries. Perhaps Englishness is less about geography and historical dates and more about symbols and emotions? There are lots of tripwires and misty hollows between the lions and unicorns, aren't there? When you begin to think about what Englishness means--- and, by extension, English food--- it all starts to become rather precarious and complicated, doesn't it?”
Source: Good Taste
“It is not for such remains as any of the above that a plea is needed; they have powerful friends, and perhaps no enemies. But there is another class of architecture that is fast fading away, and that a class which has brightened many a landscape and figured cheerfully in many a tale.”
Source: Ancient Streets and Homesteads of England
“Trust few. Even friends wear masks.”
Source: The Forgotten Heiress
“There is hope —even in unimaginable circumstances. There is hope in our living. Even in moments of despair, possibility and opportunity emerge, and with an open heart, even joy can be triumphant.”
“Their love of the Church was not, indeed, the effect of study or meditation. Few among them could have given any reason, drawn from Scripture or ecclesiastical history, for adhering to her doctrines, her ritual, and her polity; nor were they, as a class, by any means strict observers of that code of morality which is common to all Christian sects. But the experience of many ages proves that men may be ready to fight to the death, and to persecute without pity, for a religion whose creed they do not understand, and whose precepts they habitually disobey.”
Source: The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 1