Quotes from Linda Colley

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.

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

'Captives' was a deliberate bridging exercise, an attempt to use detailed knowledge of what Britain was like on the inside, to reach a deeper, more variegated understanding of how its peoples experienced external adventures and aggression over a quarter of a millennium in four continents.

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.

In 21st-century America, as in Georgian Britain, elections are raucous, flamboyant, flag-waving, expensive, and sometimes ramshackle things.

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.

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.

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

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

The United States was founded on a revolution that abolished the monarchy, aristocracy, titles and primogeniture. Britain may be able in the future to become a more equal and open society while retaining all of these things. But this has yet to be proved.

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.

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.

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.

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.

From the American Revolution right up to the Second World War, the U.S. was more likely to provoke suspicion among members of the British establishment than deferential approval. It was seen - with good cause - not just as a potential rival for empire, but also as dangerously egalitarian, worryingly innovatory, and excessively democratic.

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

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.

In the past, Britons were scathing about the cruelties of the old Roman empire and the excesses of Catholic empire builders such as the Spanish and the French. They convinced themselves that their empire was different and benign because it rested on sea power and trade rather than on armies.

Many Britons who backed Brexit believed - and believe still - that a U.K. 'freed' from 'Europe' would be able to recover and re-establish its historic destiny as an independent global trading nation.

Brussels and its multifarious networks provide member states not just with trading access but also a guarantee of regular encounters, negotiations, contacts, informants, and alliances.

Responding to Britain's future challenges will require unceasing agility in seeking out new alliances and refurbishing old ones inside Europe, not just outside it.

Of course the U.K., and its component parts, should seek out as many connections with as many parts of the world as is profitable and feasible. But to play any kind of global role effectively, the U.K. is likely always to require allies within its own continent, and far more enterprise needs devoting to this.

London is not just an international financial centre: it is also one of the most ethnically diverse places on earth. Three hundred languages are represented within its boundaries, and - as is true of some other English cities - more than half of London's inhabitants describe themselves as non-white.

From the very beginning, Americans have exhibited a taste for expansion, an appetite for empire. One of the fundamental reasons for this is very clear. Like every other western empire that has ever existed, Americans may claim to have inherited the mantle of ancient Rome.