Essayists From England

"A British historian and deeply sympathetic observer of France gives a superb account of the human condition of occupier and occupied, primarily during World War II. He fastens on the gradations of differences among regions, classes, types of people. A wise and evocative book, "a private chronicle of war and occupation," perhaps a trifle too kind, too understanding of both parties. Cobb rejoices in every moment of privacy, of sexual escape, in anything that defies coercion and "the iron demands of the military collectivity.""

"It could be argued of course, quite persuasively in fact, that Richard Cobb had to get out of history and its particular ideological corsets in order to realise his distinctive literary talents. He carried with him, however, that experiential, inquisitorial, almost psychological approach that characterises the best of his history writing. He was superb at conjuring up images of his past, of uncles and aunts, and the eccentric characters which inhabited his very English version of 'Fern Hill'."

"He has got to the roots of things, to find out what ordinary people thought, what actually happened, and what life was like for the French people affected by great events."

"He knew the French Revolution inside out, was an outstanding teacher, and wrote some of the finest English historical prose of this century."

"One has come to expect from Mr. Cobb's work a combination of erudition, verve, originality and eminent readability and those who approach this volume with these expectations will be in no way disappointed... The result is a work teeming in humanity and with the infinite variety of a Breughel canvas."

"In visual imagination, caustic caption, uncensorious appropriation of the human, breadth of sympathy, occasional excess and unfailing rationality, these essays are the captichos of Richard Cobb. He is the Goya of our craft. No social historian could want more."

"The 1970s saw Richard at the peak of his powers and influence. Books now appeared with indecent regularity – Reactions to the French Revolution in 1972, Paris and its Provinces in 1975, Tour de France and A Sense of Place, both in the following year. The first two works continued to reveal that unique, narrative style, always laced with a malicious sense of humour. But what makes them unique is the intimate knowledge of the France he was writing about. Richard's history was experiential, complicit, compassionate, at least for life's victims; it was certainly not 'objective'."

"Richard Cobb has long since proved himself incapable of writing history that is either orthodox or dull. Whether his subject is the French Revolution or the twentieth-century scene, his work bears the stamp of an idiosyncratic spirit; he is always present, an erudite and ironic tour guide, inviting us to poke into nooks and crannies of the past and evoking the shades of people and events from his own experience."

"Too many historical blockbusters are much admired but little read. This one really does deserve to be in the hands – not just on the shelf – of everyone who cares about history as a stimulating, entertaining, living evocation of the past."

"Richard Cobb was an open opponent of the methods of the Annalists. If Theodore Zeldin analysed France in their fashion, Cobb regarded sociology as "a detestable and deplorable subject that will destroy any historian who gets involved with it". Sceptical of quantification, uninterested in the rise or fall of the gentry, Cobb thought history was about the individual lives of people. His book on the revolutionary armies and his accounts of the sans-culottes, bandits and suicides made him the best-known historian of revolutionary France at a time when the methods of the Annalists had so depersonalized history that French schoolboys could no longer distinguish between an herbertist and an indulgent or between 9 Thermidor (the fall of Robespierre) and 16 Thermidor (the vote to make Napoleon first consul for life). For Cobb history was about the odd ways in which people lived or the places where they died."

"Richard Cobb, eschewing sociology, has brilliantly recaptured the tangled human reactions, immediate reactions, of Frenchmen to the French Revolution."

"Dr Wober's letter is a timely reminder of the skill employed by members of the French Communist Party in "colonizing" institutions from within. Some measure of their patient ability in this respect may be gathered from the manner in which they penetrated research organizations and institutions of higher learning during the previous régime, at a time when they had no friends in high official posts. Now, with ministers in crucial areas of the bureaucracy, we may expect to see them extending their permanent influence and patronage, this time from above. One must cling to what crumbs of comfort that remain: after 1947, the ministries that had been in Communist control for the previous three years were effectively purged. But such a purge would be much more difficult a second time."

"One is constantly amazed at the arrogant effrontery and insensitivity of intellectuals. What right has Bernard Levin to sit in judgment on the opinion of ordinary and decent people? How do Lord Longford and he know, what most people will doubt, that Myra Hindley, a woman of low and calculating cunning, as well as of consummate evil, is genuinely repentant? We do not believe it. What is there "hysterical" about hatred for utter and calculated cruelty? And is there to be no compassion for the parents of children loved and cherished, the victims of these two fiends? A minimum of modesty might have induced this self-appointed pontificator of morality to have spared us his attentions in this season of good will and family love."

"The book reminds us that 1789, far from being a year of hope and unity, was one already of intense disunity, and already produced features of the revolutionary years both in Paris and in the provinces: wild murders, lynchings, and decapitated heads placed on pikes."

"Mr. Cobb's book is one of the most important contributions to our knowledge of the French Revolution to have appeared since the war. The researches of almost twenty years have taken him on an extraordinary tour of national and provincial archives. Apart from the brief polemic by Hadengue, virtually nothing had previously been written on his subject and Mr. Cobb was exploring new territory from the start. Although no history can be definitive, it is difficult to imagine any subsequent historian going over the same ground again."

"One should at least be grateful to Mr Crossman for having reminded us that what socialism is about is coercion."

"Napoleon was a tyrant quite as abominable as Hitler; and the fact that he did not kill quite so many people is due merely to purely technical deficiencies. Even so, by early nineteenth century standards, he reached an unprecedented score. It is insulting to the brave Russian peasants, to the brave British and Allied soldiers, who died for the freedom of their countries, to suggest that they were on the wrong side, were deluded and failed to appreciate the merits of French liberty."

"No student of the Revolution can hope to understand the Terror without reading this book."

"But my own greatest debt to the Duke was the discovery of Namier. Now here was a level of history the existence of which I had never previously suspected. I was absolutely enthralled by his use of the minutiae of personal case histories, and it seemed to me that he was a historian who was writing about real people, about human beings and not just about Heroes, great principles, ideas, and that sort of thing. I was delighted above all in his portrayal of the great Duke of Newcastle, for me the very quintessence of the anti-hero, a personage of delightfully unglorious proportions."

"Instead of systems and abstractions, this latter-day Diable Boîteux lifts the thatch off the cottage, peeps through the dirty windows of the septième étage and shows us not merely what happened, but what it felt like to be a sans-culotte. This calls, not merely for great erudition, but for imaginative writing of a high order, and the reader is disappointed in neither. Mr. Cobb's style, always picturesque and concrete, is at its best when he lingers with affectionate irony over the people who appeal to him so much."

"The Elizabeth David recipe that I love and remember the most is the delicious from her Italian Food book. It's just so different from all the traditional Bolognese sauces we're used to, but I actually think it's loads better. Using chicken livers to give a lovely earthy base to the sauce is genius, and I seem to remember she also did a variation with veal, which surprised me, but really works. There's butter in there instead of olive oil, which would mortify a few Italian nonnas, and also ham, but it's a fascinating way of recreating a classic sauce. All through my career, I've been inspired by female cooks – , of course; , , – and Elizabeth David is up there with the best."

"... I went on a short trip to and , to see an exhausting exhibition of Piedmontese baroque at , the former palace of the royal house of Savoy, and more enjoyably, to eat s and , white truffles with , white truffles and scrambled eggs, white truffles spread on bread and butter. My article Trufflesville Regis, was written rather hurriedly for the Spectator, and contained any number of Italian spelling mistakes. Nobody complained except the Italian friend I had been with on the trip. In due course she corrected them for me, and a second version of the article was published by in his Compleat Imbiber."

"Those who make an occasional marketing expedition to or to the region of can buy Greek cheese and Calamata olives, from the Middle East, little birds preserved in oil from Cyprus, stuffed vine leaves from Turkey, Spanish sausages, Egyptian brown beans, chick peas, , Spanish, Italian, and Cypriot olive oil, Italian salame and rice, even occasionally Neapolitan Mozzarella cheese, and honey from . These are the details which complete the flavour of a Mediterranean meal, but the ingrediens which make this cookery so essentially different from our own are available to all; they are the olive oil, wines, lemons, garlic, onions, tomatoes, and the aromatic herbs and spices which go to make up what is so often lacking in English cooking: variety of flavour and colour, and the warm, rich, stimulating smells of genuine food."

"first met Elizabeth David in 1984, or thereabouts, at Hilaire, the Chelsea restaurant of which he was chef. She came for supper with , and the widow of the poet was wearing – he remembers it vividly – a polka-dot dress. "I was very excited," he says. "Because I was a fan." ... at the end of her lunch, the young Hopkinson left his kitchen, clutching a copy of An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, David's collected journalism and the book of hers that he loves the most. She duly signed it for him, and so began a friendship that would last until she died in 1992."

"The maxim of quantity, where one tries to be as informative as one possibly can, and gives as much information as is needed, and no more."

"Strong freedom ensures that some actions are represented as directed to ends which are not merely mine, but which are also freely adopted or pursued by me."

"The maxim of quality, where one tries to be truthful, and does not give information that is false or that is not supported by evidence."

"The maxim of relation, where one tries to be relevant, and says things that are pertinent to the discussion."

"The maxim of manner, when one tries to be as clear, as brief, and as orderly as one can in what one says, and where one avoids obscurity and ambiguity."

"Her weekly column became an icon of all that was hairy and terrifying to men who found the women's movement a threat to their security. She was parodied, ridiculed and attacked. Mostly, though, she became a focal voice of women all over Britain who wrote to her in their thousands and took courage from her to look at the truth about their lives. ... Her radicalism never wavered but her honesty demanded that she explore the ambivalences feminists like her were scarcely able to confess to themselves, let alone to the world. The result was "Letters From A Faint-hearted Feminist", a new series of columns in which issues of central feminist ideology were put through the same critical wringer as the unthinking patriarchal orthodoxies that had been in her earlier columns. Could not you wear high heels with a boiler suit? Were beautiful clothes a gorgeous prison, or a legitimate choice for independent women? Was monogamy inevitably a road to servitude? The cleverness of those columns was Jill's ability to admit to ambivalence, to weakness and to changing her mind without compromising her beliefs in equality, independence and the destructiveness of stereotypes. In their way, they were a bridge between the revolutionary battlefields of the 70s and the next generation who rightly took their freedoms for granted and saw no reason whatever to agonise about boiler suits or PhDs."

"From the word go, Tweedie, 'the doyenne of feminist journalists bringing the hottest of bulletins from the front line of the sex war' (ibid) [See note below] was both partisan and subjective/ Although reserved about detaikls of her life, especially the tragedy of her children, she mined other experiences. Her style, too, was the radical opposite of the remote discoursew which passed for objective journalism. She wrote as she spoke and the words jumped off the page, full of colloquialisms and inner dialogue."

"Our model is the amazing Jill Tweedie, a former columnist on the Guardian. Her close friend Polly Toynbee told me that after a diagnosis of motor neurone disease – the condition that drove Diane Pretty to battle for the right to die – Jill calmly acquired the medication needed for a sure and safe despatch. She booked herself into a hospice for what she told her family was a short respite and took her tablets whilst she was still capable of self administration, but in a setting where it would be professionals who would find her body rather than those close to her."

"She [Tweedie] opens her case with an account of her own experience — she married three times and twice it was rotten — and goes on to list, throughout the ages, the devastation perpetuated in the name of love. ... I disagree with some of her book. She chronicles a horrific list of cruelties and repressions practiced in the name of love and she infers that it is the exception rather than the rule that people know how to love one another. She must be wrong. What about all those millions of human beings who, long before the welfare state, despite misery, hunger and disease, mostly managed to care for each other with charity and tenderness? I don't know why any of us should presume that we're here to do anything very special, except procreate ..."

"In my early teens, skinny ribs daily rent asunder by the explosive emotions within - oh golly gosh how I hate that spotty, mingy Mildred and will Rock Hudson ever ever clasp me in his steely arms - I burst upon a diary with a great gold lock. But the Moroccan leather binding, the milky expanse within, instantly transformed me into Baroness Munchausen. My very handwriting spiked into the serious trembly copperplate I deemed more suitable for the consumptive heroine I wished to be than the thick round letters of the large schoolgirl I was (if experts today are right and handwriting shapes the fortunes of the writer, I should have died elegantly at the end of the diary). Even the contents were bastard - I found it beneath my dignity to write of anything but the most searing Brontë-esque passions and now, far from being a record of day-to-day events, each entry requires a simultaneous translation: "Today I think I shall go mad, I shiver, I groan, I sob" (Myron Fickelburger didn’t sit next to me in Chemistry); "Wild gales sweep across the moors, I run and howl, my eyes stream tears" (it’s windy in the playground and I’ve got this bit of asphalt in my eye). Discovered long hence, that diary would provide historians with a vivid and haunting picture of youthful stress in the fifties - vivid and haunting and deeply untrue."

"It would be a tragedy if the still embryonic Women's Liberation Movement in this country sank without trace into the amniotic fluid of niceness, but already I detect some signs. The women directly concerned with organising the March 6 demo, though they point with pride to the massive WL movement in the US seem not to have learned very much from the performance of their American sisters. They bend over backwards to be fair. ('We must be very careful not to assume that if a woman is refused a job it is sexual discrimination' — why? It's not our job to worry about fairness.) They talk too much about wanting to be taken seriously; they say too often how much they deprecate extremes and shudder with refined horror at bra-burnings, and at SCUM and WITCH. Not at at the image we want, they say, metaphorically crooking their little fingers and adjusting their petal hats. We don't want to go to jail, or worse, be laughed at. The tendency among these ladies is to sneer at the Germaine Greers of the movement and, indeed, it is easy enough to carp at sweeping genralisations and lack of careful factual research. But anger, neurosis, insights , obsession and extremism is where it is at and women will have lost the battle before it has begun if they reject all this and concentrate their energies only on concrete injustice. Reforms like equal pay, equal job opportunities, free contraception, better nursery schools, have needed implementation as long as I can remember, and armies of hard-working, dedicated women have been pushing them forward as long as I can remember, too, and a great deal longer. The only new ingredient Women's Lib had to offer was the intellectual recognition of an imprisoned psyche, and the realisation that when that inner battle is fought and won, concrete injustices crumble at the roots. And that is not done by being nice. American liberationists did not surge into life thinking of the other chap's point of view or making constant efforts to be fair, moderate, cool and ladylike. They succeeded by being prejudiced, unfair, immoderate, uncool and devastatingly unladylike and they came up with the only symbolic image of the movement so far (em) bra-burning. A small and risible thing, perhaps, but their own."

"The point of the New Right is to support all discourses that portend to inequality. If the Right believes in anything it believes in the moral goodness of inequality in all forms, and therefore we support discourse that manifests inegalitarianism and inequality."

"What do we think should be done with the murderers of Baby P? Yes, we should hang them until they are dead, and we should let the masses see it, and we should televise it and put it on before Question Time."

"This mantle of the heroic whereby Right-wing existentialists like Captain America fight against the extreme Right in accordance with democratic values is one of the interesting tricks that’s played with the nature of the heroic... They’ve always known this. Michael Moorcock, amongst others, speaks of the danger of subliminal Rightism in much fantasy writing where you can slip into an unknowing, uncritical ultra-Right and uncritical attitude towards the masculine, towards the heroic, towards the vanquishing of forces you don’t like, towards self-transcendence, for example."

"If people with our sorts of values ruled modernity, everything about this society would be at one level the same, and in every other respect completely different. People would still drive contemporary cars, there'd still be jets, and there'd still be supercomputers and so on, but the texture and the nature of life would be different in every respect. How so? Firstly, cultures would be mono-ethnic. Secondly, there would be a respect for the past glories of our civilisation. Thirdly, we would not preface every attempt to be strong by saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry for what we have done..." We're not sorry! And we've stepped over the prospect of being sorry."

"People are unequal! 75% of it's genetic and biological. Partly criminality's biological; predispositions to drug addictions are biological; intelligence is biological; beauty is biological; ferocity or a predisposition to it is biological; intellect is biological. You can do a bit, but you're born to be what you are, and we should celebrate what we were born to be."

"We have become subordinate to the United States, and those in our clerisy, our elite, who think that the United States isn't the answer, want to get closer to Europe as an alternative model. In other words, whatever model they choose, Britain isn't in the middle or the first port of call, because they believe that Britain is over. They believe they can rule over the ruins, but it's the culture of the ruins that ruins the culture."

"So, there's a total disconnect now between the ruling group and the masses and the masses have got to show some stomach for once, and they've got to be prepared to vote for radical people who will clear out New Labour. Here in the north, in the south, in the east and the west outside England, within Britain and elsewhere. Clear them out! And the Tories will do no good either. You’ve got to clear them out. The Liberals are just a bloc in between the two that give the other two their ideas, all the sort of destructive ideas that Phillips is in favor of and that I talked about earlier. You've got to clear them out as well. There needs to be a new start! And it won’t be UKIP and it won’t be the Greens, even though there are good ideas which are Green and the idea of leaving the European Union (the UKIP option) is an attractive one that should be supported. But there is only really one option for this country and that is to vote for a party that is patriotic, which is British, which is elitist, which is nationalistic, which believes that the only socialism or the only social concern that really is validated by history, by genetics, by identity is patriotism."

"But the truth of the matter is the more English you become through remembrance and historicism and identification, the more British you are. And the more British you are, the more European you are. And by European, I mean White. Nothing to do with an endorsement of the politics of the European Union. And the more you esteem and value yourself the more you will be interested in the culture of your own people and what they have achieved."

"Everything is ideological. Every BBC news broadcast is totally ideological, and is in some respects a soft form of Communism, which is what liberalism is... If I was running the BBC, it would be slightly different from what's on tonight."

"The danger of the ideology of the victim, which I don't really subscribe to except as a tactic on occasion, is that you begin to think like a victim, and you begin to act like a victim. Many of our people now are almost asking for a whipping, asking for a collective beating, asking to be forgiven for the past, asking to be forgiven for sins and crimes of the past which they never committed, which they’re hardly aware of, which can be reconstrued as episodes of heroic cruelty or glorious vanguardism that don't even need to be apologised for in the past or in the present."

"Liberalism is moral syphilis, and I'm stepping over it!"

"Under the pseudo-Gothic vaults, brightly hatted, lace stockinged, discreetly jewelled, the 27 womwen Members go clicking over the tiled floors. ... Highly educated, immensely hard working, more dedicated, more conscientious than many of their male colleagues these women hold down one of the most demanding jobs there is. Many of them are married, a few have small children and some have households organised beyond the dreams of Mrs Beeton. And all of them have one regret — that there are no more than 24 hours in a day. Time is an enemy. Watching telly by the fireside becomes a rare treat, an evening at the theatre something to be planned for weeks in advance, and then frustrated. They need energy, energy, and more energy. This is no life for fluttery ladies with migraine[s] and female complaints. Life at the House is not yet geared to women. The men have their built in barber but they have no hairdresser, what do you do when your hair droops and your on television that evening? They share one bath between them. They have no office of their own."

"In Tuesday's Guardian, the doyenne of the liberal-Left establishment, Polly Toynbee, unburdened herself of the anger she feels when she is attacked for being middle class: "Right-wingers have long used class against any middle-class Leftist, a bullying that sidesteps the real political argument." It's no wonder she's so upset at being called middle class. It's quite wrong. Mary Louisa Toynbee (as she was born) is the [great] great granddaughter of the Earl of Carlisle. Her [great grand] uncle was the philanthropist Arnold Toynbee. She comes from a very grand family."

"Polly is the high priestess of our paranoid, mollycoddled, risk-averse, airbagged, booster-seated culture of political correctness and 'elf 'n' safety fascism. In an ideal Polly Toynbee world, private sector broadcasting would be banned, Rupert Murdoch would be nationalised, and the BBC would hire thousands more taxpayer-funded social affairs correspondents to psalm the benefits of social democracy."

"In so far as New Labour has a fairy godmother, Polly is the girl. She incarnates all the nannying, high-taxing, high-spending schoolmarminess of Blair's Britain."