Non Fiction Authors From England

"The Revolution is not to be considered as a mere effort of the nation on a pressing emergency to rescue itself from the violence of a particular monarch; much less as grounded upon the danger of the Anglican church, its emoluments, and dignities, from the bigotry of a hostile religion. It was rather the triumph of those principles which, in the language of the present day, are denominated liberal or constitutional, over those of absolute monarchy, or of monarchy not effectually controlled by stated boundaries. It was the termination of a contest between the regal power and that of parliament, which could not have been brought to so favourable an issue by any other means."

"The principal works of this judicious and learned writer are A View of Europe during the Middle Ages, The Constitutional History of England, and An Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. With the skill of an advocate he combines the calmness of a judge; and he has been justly called "the accurate Hallam," because his facts are in all cases to be depended on. By his clear and illustrative treatment of dry subjects, he has made them interesting; and his works have done as much to instruct his age as those of any writer. Later researches in literature and constitutional history may discover more than he has presented, but he taught the new explorers the way, and will always be consulted with profit, as the representative of this varied learning during the first half of the nineteenth century."

"Hallam's View of Europe, during the Middle Ages. 2 vols. A work of profound research, and displaying a free and vigorous spirit of inquiry and criticism."

"They say men can never understand the pain of childbirth. Well, they can if you hit them in the testicles with a cricket bat for 14 hours."

"When ever I see an Englishman I ask him this question.Never is there a good answer.i have vowed to put this question to every Englishman. It is what I owe to the dead"

"If the Allies had agreed to exchange Lorries millions of Jews would still be alive . I know this. I was in the Resistance. I was in touch with G.H.Q. middle east Cairo."

"In March 1942 I was living in Budapest with my father and my uncle. Now we listened to B.B.C. of course why did your government not warn us about going on those trains?"

"I am from Israel.i am a journalist.i've been in the states on a trip ."

"In the U.K. you trusted people. In the main you took it for granted people acted decently. You made an assumption about the man who sat next to you on the Tube. You didn’t know for sure. You just assumed. Well, if you didn’t make assumptions like that how could you trust in the government? Townrow wanted to tell Mrsk K that trust in big things started with personal relations"

"You stopped me from doing something that shouldn’t be done. Well, you’ve got to make a start, haven’t you? I mean you’ve got to start with yourself. That’s all you know about. So you’ve got to start patiently putting one foot right and another foot right. That’s what I’m thanking you for."

"When all the Blandishments of Life are gone, The Coward sneaks to Death, the Brave live on."

"... What does it mean to be lonely? How do we live, if we're not intimately engaged with another human being? How do we connect with other people, particularly if we don't find speaking easy? Is sex a cure for loneliness, and if it is, what happens if our body or sexuality is considered deviant or damaged, if we are ill or unblessed with beauty? And is technology helping with these things? Does it draw us together, or trap us behind screens?"

"… If some of England’s seemingly sublime gardens were economically dependent on the sugar, cotton and tobacco plantations of America and the West Indies, others were contingent upon the practice of , the legal process of taking the formerly open fields, commons and wasteland of the medieval period into private ownership."

"At the age of 39 I was fairly sure I would spend the rest of my life alone. I lived alone, I worked alone. No matter what I did, or who I dated, I didn’t seem to be able to find the relationship I longed for. ... Ian was nearly three decades older than me, but all the same we quickly became friends. We were both passionate gardeners, and we’d take tours around our patches, pointing out the plants we were most proud of. ... We didn’t just love each other. We were in love with each other. We were the foundation of each other’s lives. We decided to get married that summer. Suddenly there was no time to waste. ... ... I used to worry I’d never meet anyone and now I live in terror of Ian’s death. He’s the same age as my parents; I know it’s likely that I’ll lose them all at around the same time, a loss so cataclysmic I can barely begin to fathom it. I worry about my sweet husband vanishing into the blind alleys of dementia. I worry about blood clots, bowel cancer, a heart attack, a stroke."

"... If you're a writer who works in biographies, you discover that that the people you're writing about aren't very nice. Not always. Sometimes they're wonderful."

"The greatest disaster that has ever been been recorded in connection with the plant-houses at Kew occurred on August 3rd, 1879. In the morning of that day a storm of hail wrecked the glass roofs of most of the houses. The hailstones are recorded to have averaged five inches in circumference. Nearly 40,000 panes were smashed, and the weight of the broken glass amounted to eighteen tons. A grant of £7,000 for repairs was sanctioned by Parliament, and an army of glaziers was set to work. The tropical plants suffered from cold and exposure, but the houses were made whole again before winter."

"One of the most frequent mistakes made in planting trees of any size is in burying the roots too deeply. If trees that have grown naturally from seed are examined, it will always be found that the place where the uppermost roots push from the stem is about the level of the ground, and this is what must be aimed at with planted ones. The normal buttressed base of a trunk is due chiefly to the thickening of its big main roots. The stems and bark of most trees are intended by nature to be in free air, and when buried even in a few inches in the earth perpetual darkness and damp frequently cause a ring of buried bark to rot. In light sandy soil the danger is not so great, but in heavy clayey soil it must be strictly guarded against."

"Silver or gold trimmings may be inherent in the plant, or they may be caused by a virus. The virus does not add to their beauty. I have a camellia that is disfigured by a scattering of discolored leaves. Even the natural variegation, if you can call it natural, is sometimes very unattractive. "Perhaps more rubbish is foisted on purchasers of trees and shrubs in the shape of variegated sorts than of anything else," [William Jackson] Bean writes. "A variegated plant should have its leaf colouring bright, well-defined and abundant to be of value. Yet by some dealers every spotty or muddy coloured form is thought worthy of a name and flattering description." As thoroughly as I agree with Bean about the prevalence of spotty variegations, especially the that looks as if yellow paint had been splashed on it, I don't think nurserymen are to be blamed for providing what people want and a great many people want the hideous aucuba."

"It was quite clearly satirising the Supreme Court decision. It therefore follows that those people who made the complaints on Twitter and in the newspapers and on GB News knew very well that Aaronovitch had not remotely 'suggested' that Biden should have Trump killed, but pretended that's what they thought because they disagree politically with the writer and wished to land him in hot water. In other words, they were lying. There is no other word for it. To deliberately misconstrue something is to lie, and that's what they did, thousands upon thousands of them."

"[On his mother] She was disapproving when I grew my hair long and even more disapproving when, a few years later, I cut it again. I had, in a sense, let my own hair down."

"The grand-paternal Aaronovitches came to England as Jewish refugees — "aliens" as the 1906 anti-immigration legislation called them — fleeing the murderous Russian pogroms. They scraped in just before the door closed on their kind. Aaronovitch's paternal grandfather drifted into the east London rag trade. Buttonholes were the illiterate old needleman's speciality. David's paternal grandmother spoke Yiddish all her life. The book's central focus is on David's parents. They are not, for him, mum and dad. He uses their first names — Lavender and Sam — throughout. It is as if he is holding them up with forceps."

"The left's vice has always been self-righteousness, just as the right's is smugness. But when you add the sense of entitlement that is characteristic of so many of the younger middle-class people in Britain, you can end up with an impatience with compromise coupled to a belief that anything that is strongly felt must somehow be enacted."

"[[John Pilger|[John] Pilger]]'s early Cambodia films, Year Zero (1979) and Year One (1980), were very moving, made Cambodia and the horror of the Khmer Rouge rule a real issue for millions of people and raised a lot of money for Cambodia. But I thought both films were flawed by the equation of America and the Khmer Rouge. By skilful orchestration of emotions and actuality, Pilger seemed to show that, of governments, only the Vietnamese really cared about helping Cambodia and that official Western aid was designed to subvert rather than succour. I thought that this was dangerous nonsense, dangerous for hungry Cambodians, because the Vietnamese had put outrageous restrictions on aid. Also, to accept Vietnamese domination of the country seemed to me like accepting Soviet domination of Poland because they liberated it from the Nazis."

"But, [[John Pilger|[John] Pilger]] objected, "Amnesty produced a catalogue of Saddam's killings that amounted mostly to hundreds every year, not millions. It is an appaling record that does not require the exaggeration of state-inspired propaganda". In fact Pilger's own source said (unquoted by him) that, in addition to the number of known executions Amnesty had also collected information on around 17,000 cases of disappearances, over the last 20 years, and "the real figure may be much higher"."

"[I]t has become customary in recent weeks to refer to [[Nigel Farage|Mr [Nigel] Farage]] as the most consequential politician since Margaret Thatcher. ... I knew Lady Thatcher, and to compare the two is to compare the Uffizi Gallery to a third-rate auction house."

"During the Anfal anti-Kurdish campaign in 1987 as many as 180,000 Kurds disappeared. At Halabja, in one incident alone, more people were killed than in the whole of this latest Gulf war. The most conservative death toll attached to the repression of the Shia uprising in 1991 was 30,000. One million died in the Iran-Iraq war started by Saddam. And this is reduced by Pilger to "hundreds every year"."

"When the discussion gets under way, a number of things become apparent. The first is that the people here are mostly very bright, very well-informed and anything but swivel-eyed saddos. The second is that sci-fi and fantasy are not, as I'd imagined, boys-only territories. Half the people attending are women, and mostly feminists at that. Perhaps because the creation of alternative worlds allows imaginary spaces in which sexism and male awfulness simply do not exist. (In the afternoon I was part of a small otherwise all-female audience for two women librarians discussing censorship in children's sci-fi. I learnt a lot.) More than anything these people — men and women — seemed to want to be writers. They had a detailed appreciation of plotting and characterisation, and seemed to seek advice about their own projects whenever they could."

"June with her glancing grasses, June with a smiling sky, June, brown as the country lasses Or wings of the dragon-fly!The mown hay lies like sedges Or weed of the seashore strewn; Abrim with corn to the hedges The fields are filled in June."

"Love that fills the firmament with glory!— All the world knew this, but now I know it; Last have proved the eternal story And in song will shew it, All to gain, if you shall deign Me to be your poet.O divinest Heavenly Aphrodite, Here on earth incarnate I behold you, Lovelier, more serene and mighty Than my lips have told you, Far beyond my dreamings fond In my arms to fold you.You it was knew where the sweet flowers haunted; I could praise them found, but you could find them; I with studious art unvaunted Have in garlands twined them, And as due bring here to you On your brows to bind them.Take the worship, and with grace in guerdon Still for me new flower-abodes discover, That my song may keep its burden, There is nought above her; I, denied her breast, abide Her devoutest lover."

"Sometimes the original may have to wait until there is a vessel to transfer it into."

"Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I think that there is plenty of room for a small number of forums where the people who are very doubtful about the way that string theory is going can talk to their critics."

"'Einstein is completely cuckoo'. That is how the cocky young Robert Oppenheimer described the world's most famous scientist in early 1935, after visiting him in Princeton. ... Einstein had been trying for a decade to develop an ambitious new theory in ways that demonstrated, in the view of Oppenheimer and others, that the sage of Princeton had lost the plot. Einstein was virtually ignoring matter on the smallest scale, using quantum theory. He was seeking an ambitious new theory, not in response to puzzling experimental discoveries, but as an intellectual exercise—using only his imagination, underpinned by mathematics. Although this approach was unpopular among his peers, he was pioneering a method similar to what some of his most distinguished successors are now using successfully at the frontiers of research."

"A physicist friend of mine once had a terrible spate of misfortune. Her flat was burgled, her cat was run over, and her grandfather died, all in the same week. Needing a bit of TLC, she went to see her professor, who offered three words of advice: “Do some physics.” For most people who are in need of consolation, I suspect physics is among the last things they would consider. , a former ' science editor, wants to persuade them that the branch of science so many people find soulless and intimating can offer much spiritual balm. He makes his case in what he calls a “love letter to physics”. ... For me, the main joy of physics is that it puts human beings so firmly in our place. Even if all of us – and every other living thing – died tomorrow, every quantum in the universe would carry on obliviously, doing its eternal, orderly dance to fundamental laws that we shall probably never discover. If you’re not a scientist, that thought may not be very consoling. But I’m just happy to keep on doing some physics."

"As every physicist knows, Dirac was, in the words of Niels Bohr, "the strangest man of quantum mechanics" — someone deeply private, of very, very few words, rectilinear in thinking, virtually, apparently devoid of empathy with other human beings, always an outsider."

"‘The greatest living theoretical physicist’ – many commentators in the past few decades have described Steven Weinberg in such terms. When I rather cheekily asked him what he thought of that statement, he shot back: ‘It is quite ridiculous to rank scientists like that’, adding with a twinkle in his eye, ‘but it would be impolite to dispute the conclusion’. That reply was classic Weinberg: self-aware, intimidatingly direct but always ready to lighten the moment with humour."

"Fifty Shades of Grey is so infantile [...] More like baby porn. You have to wait until page 200 for any sex at all. She doesn’t get her bottom spanked until page 400. The writing is jerky: it needed a good edit."

"[On her marriage to (Sir) Terence Conran in 1955] It was just criticise, criticise, criticise, from morning to night. It was very wearing. I said at one point, "What I don’t understand is why you want me to stay." He had a good think and then said, "Because you are a very valuable business asset, because you make me laugh and because I got used to you, like my old school rug." What I wanted him to say, of course, was, "I love you." So I walked out."

"Canongate have been wonderful. They've allowed me to write the word 'masturbation' back into the copy. When Lace was first published, Michael Korda [the publishing giant who was Conran's editor] said the world wasn't ready for it. We had to use a polite euphemism. But now we have the verb."

"[On her dislike of Christmas cards: M]y self-esteem isn't based on how many shepherds and robins I've got perched on the sideboard."

"O celestial gift of divine liberality, descending from the Father of light to raise up the rational soul even to heaven. ... Undoubtedly, indeed, thou hast placed thy desirable tabernacle in books, where the Most High, the Light of light, the Book of Life, hath established thee. Here then all who ask receive, all who seek find thee, to those who knock thou openest quickly. In books cherubim expand their wings, that the soul of the student may ascend and look around from pole to pole, from the rising and the setting sun, from the north and from the sea. In them the most high and incomprehensible God Himself is contained and worshipped."

"Life’s too short to stuff a mushroom."

"[On her divorce from (Sir) Terence Conran in 1962] I was 30. My mother said, "Well, perhaps it's as well your father's dead because otherwise you couldn't have got divorced." I gave her an astounded look, but that's how it was then."

"I came back from a visit to my mother in Canada to find a note on the mantelpiece from Kevin [O'Sullivan]. It said: "By the time you read this I will be in Moscow. My wedding ring is in the waste-paper basket where it belongs." Kevin didn't divorce me, he deserted me. We divorced by mutual consent."

"A gentil man, er he take a cooke in to his seruice, he wyll firste diligently examine hym, howe many sortes of meates, potages, and sauces, he can perfectly make, and howe well he can season them, that they may be bothe pleasant and nourishynge; yea and if it be but a fauconer, he wyll scrupulously enquire what skyll he hath in feedyng, called diete, and kepyng of his hauke from all sickenes, also how he can reclaime her and prepare her to flyght. And to suche a cooke or fauconer, whom he findeth expert, he spareth nat to gyue moche wages with other bounteous rewardes. But of a schole maister, to whom he will committe his childe, to be fedde with lernynge and instructed in vertue, whose lyfe shall be the principall monument of his name and honour, he neuer maketh forther enquirie but where he may haue a schole maister; and with howe litel charge; and if one be perchance founden, well lerned, but he will nat take paynes to teache without he may haue a great salary, he than speketh. nothing more, or els saith, What shall so moche wages be gyuen to a schole maister whiche wolde kepe me two seruantes? to whom maye be saide these wordes, that by his sonne being wel lerned he shall receiue more commoditie and also worship than by the seruice of a hundred cokes and fauconers."

"Lorde god, howe many good and clene wittes of children be nowe a dayes perisshed by ignorant schole maisters. Howe litle substancial doctrine is apprehended by the fewenesse of good gramariens? Not withstanding I knowe that there be some well lerned, whiche haue taught, and also do teache, but god knoweth a fewe, and they with small effecte, hauing therto no comforte, theyr aptist and moste propre scholers, after they be well instructed in speakyng latine, and understanding some poetes, being taken from theyr schole by their parentes, and either be brought to the courte, and made lakayes or pages, or els are bounden prentises; wherby the worshyp that the maister, aboue any reward, couaiteih to haue by the praise of his scholer, is utterly drowned; wherof I haue herde schole maisters, very well lerned, of goode righte complayne. But yet (as I sayd) the fewenesse of good gramariens is a great impediment of doctrine. ...Undoubtedly ther be in this realme many well lerned, whiche if the name of a schole maister were nat so moche had in contempte, and also if theyr labours with abundant salaries mought be requited, were righte sufficient and able to induce their herers to excellent lernynge, so they be nat plucked away grene, and er they be in doctrine sufficiently rooted. But nowe a dayes, if to a bachelar or maister of arte studie of philosophie waxeth tediouse, if he haue a spone full of latine, he wyll shewe forth a hoggesheed without any lernynge, and offre to teache grammer and expoune noble writers, and to be in the roome of a maister: he wyll, for a small salarie, sette a false colour of lernyng on propre wittes, whiche wyll be wasshed away with one shoure of raine. For if the children be absent from schole by the space of one moneth, the best lerned of them will uneth tell wheder Fato, wherby Eneas was brought in to Itali, were other a man, a horse, a shyppe, or a wylde goose. Al thoughe their maister wyll perchance auaunte hym selfe to be a good philosopher."

"In euery daunse, of a moste auncient custome, there daunseth to gether a man and a woman, holding eche other, by the hande or the arme, whiche betokeneth concorde. Nowe it behouethe the daunsers and also the beholders of them to knowe all qualities incident to a man, and also, all qualities to a woman lyke wyse appertaynynge.A man in his naturall perfection is fiers, hardy, stronge in opinion, couaitous of glorie, desirous of knowlege, appetiting by generation to brynge forthe his semblable. The good nature of a woman is to be milde, timerouse, tractable, benigne, of sure remembrance, and shamfast. Diuers other qualities of eche of them mought be founde, out, but these be moste apparaunt, and for this time sufficient.Wherfore, whan we beholde a man and a woman daunsinge to gether, let us suppose there to be a concorde of all the saide dualities, beinge ioyned to gether, as I haue set them in ordre. And the meuing of the man wolde be more vehement, of the woman more delicate, and with lasse aduauncing of the body, signifienge the courage and strenthe that oughte to be in a man, and the pleasant sobrenesse that shulde be in a woman. And in this wise fiersenesse ioyned with mildenesse maketh Seueritie; audacitie with timerositie maketh Magnanimitie; wilfull opinion and tractabilitie (which is to be shortly persuaded and meued) makethe Constance a vertue; Couaitise of Glorie adourned with benignititie causeth honour; desire of knowlege with sure remembrance procureth Sapienee; Shamfastnes ioyned to appetite of generation maketh Continence, whiche is a meane betwene Chastilie and inordinate luste. These qualities, in this wise beinge knitte to gether, and signified in the personages of man and woman daunsinge, do expresse or sette out the figure of very nobilitie; whiche in the higher astate it is contained, the more. excellent is the vertue in estimation."

"[On being motivated to leave the marriage] I went to St Paul's [the independent school in west London]. That was very important. The mistresses were all unmarried – their fiancees had all died on the Somme – and they were quietly subversive. Paulinas are known for having their own views. It would be very difficult for a Paulina not to expect equality in marriage. So when you get married, and find it's not so, it's a shock."

"I haue nowe enterprised to describe in our vulgare tunge the fourme of a iuste publike weale: whiche mater I haue gathered as well moste noble autours (grekes and latynes) as by myne owne experience, I beinge continually trayned in some dayly affaires of the publike weale of this your moste noble realme all mooste from my chyldhode."

"[On turning down a fourth marriage at the age of 80] He might want to watch football on a Saturday afternoon. I might not be able to eat baked beans in bed at 3am if I want to."

"[The anonymous (male) interviewer recently read Lace with pleasure] Oh really? My ex-husband paid his lawyer to read it, to check whether there was anything to sue me about. A lovely job for £250 an hour. ["Did he find anything?"] Well Terence didn’t sue me [...] But I don’t think his lawyer did a very good job."