Quotes from Richard Toye

Churchill, Twain said, 'knew all about war and nothing about peace'. Twain added that he himself disapproved of the war in South Africa, 'and he thought England sinned when she interfered with the Boers, as the United States is sinning in meddling in the affairs of the Filipinos. England and America were kin in almost everything; now they are kin in sin.

the early worm is likely to get caught.

It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace, while he is still organising and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.

On racial issues, though, he made no effort to adjust to modernity.143 When asked if he had seen the film Carmen Jones, a musical with a black cast, he replied that he had walked out early on as he didn't like 'blackamoors'.

the industrialist G. D. Birla, one of Gandhi's big financial backers. (As someone once said, 'it costs a great deal of money to keep Gandhiji living in poverty'.)

Churchill thought that it was 'Crazy' to give universal suffrage to 'these naked savages'. Lyttelton hoped to 'retard' constitutional development in Nigeria and cited the principle of 'divide et impera'.

Yet although he was undoubtedly sincere in his intention that all races should be treated with justice, that notion was perfectly consistent in his mind with the concept of white supremacy. For him, there was a duty incumbent on the superior British race to safeguard and improve lesser ones. That, indeed, was part of the justification for imperial rule.

At its zenith, around 500 million people, or about a quarter of the world's population, were British subjects.

The democratic principles of Europe are by no means suited to the development of Asiatic and African people.

the frontiers of our Empire to know that the British dominion all over the world could not endure for a year, perhaps not for a month, if it was founded upon a material basis. The strength and splendour of our authority is derived not from physical forces, but from moral ascendancy, liberty, justice, English tolerance, and English honesty.

I have seen enough in peace and war of the frontiers of our Empire to know that the British dominion all over the world could not endure for a year, perhaps not for a month, if it was founded upon a material basis. The strength and splendour of our authority is derived not from physical forces, but from moral ascendancy, liberty, justice, English tolerance, and English honesty.

Much had happened to Churchill in the interval between these two speeches. In January 1895 his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, died at the age of forty-five from a degenerative illness, possibly syphilis,

the tribesmen 'surrendered some thousands of their rifles, most of them captured or stolen from us, and were [. . .] given umpteen heavy bags of silver to induce them to go on pretending they had been defeated'.

In 1928 Birkenhead stood down from the Cabinet in order to earn the money needed to fund his lavish lifestyle.

Oliver Cromwell's words in dismissal of the Long Parliament: 'You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.

it is impossible to cure a political prostitute from whoring'.