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.

Linda Colley

Once conscription was introduced during the First World War, and once Britain's wars ceased being confined to the empire or to continental Europe and began seriously threatening our own shores and safety, it became much easier to denounce any anti-war agitation and argument as inherently irresponsible and unpatriotic.

Linda Colley

War Men World War

Like the proverbial elephant in the room, American anti-Europeanism has loomed large for so long that few trouble to notice it.

Linda Colley

Verb Trouble T

Both Conservative and Labour politicians in Britain are rather too fond of praising the relative 'classlessness' of American society and of urging their own people to emulate it. There is a certain falseness about such arguments, and also a certain hypocrisy.

Linda Colley

Society Men Too

American prejudices about Europe rarely surface in headlines, but they are real, pervasive, and ingrained.

Linda Colley

T Surface Surf

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.

Linda Colley

Work Society Power

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.

Linda Colley

Men Wit Visible

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.

Linda Colley

History World Which

Too close and unthinking an allegiance to Washington has sometimes got British governments into trouble.

Linda Colley

Time Men Government

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.

Linda Colley

Men Independence Experience

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.

Linda Colley

Religion Age White

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.

Linda Colley

Thanksgiving Home Wit

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.

Linda Colley

Power Men Written

There can never be a single, satisfactory comprehensive account of the 'history of the British empire.'

Linda Colley

History UN Tory

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.

Linda Colley

Respect Family Art

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.

Linda Colley

Religion Than Ten

The British especially have no excuse for forgetting that empire is a most complex and persistent beast. And it has claws.

Linda Colley

Use Us Tis

Historically, individuals possessed of the confidence that privilege and good fortune bestow have often proved conspicuous reformers: think only of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Linda Colley

Good Vile Us

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.

Linda Colley

Hope Your You

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.

Linda Colley

Men Alone Winston Churchill

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.

Linda Colley

Time Wrong Us

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.

Linda Colley

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.

Linda Colley

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.

Linda Colley

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.

Linda Colley

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.

Linda Colley

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.

Linda Colley

It is hard to convince people that you mean them well if you are looking at them down the barrel of a gun.

Linda Colley

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.

Linda Colley

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.

Linda Colley

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.

Linda Colley

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.

Linda Colley

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.

Linda Colley

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.

Linda Colley

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.

Linda Colley

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.

Linda Colley

Globalisation is not remotely new; it has been occurring, at differing rates and with differing degrees of scale, for centuries.

Linda Colley

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.

Linda Colley

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.

Linda Colley

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.

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.

Linda Colley

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.

Linda Colley

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.

Linda Colley

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.

Linda Colley

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.'

Linda Colley

Hillary Clinton is tough, clever, and formidably well briefed, and has been politically ambitious all her adult life.

Linda Colley

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.

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.

Linda Colley

Even leaving aside its military bases, America's influence on the domestic ordering of British life has been enormous, though sometimes unrecognised.

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.

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.

Linda Colley