Quotes from Simon Jenkins

The British countryside is threatened by people and interests who really do not care for it

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction.' Even

The contemporary Matthew Paris wrote that, 'foul as it is, hell itself is defiled by the foulness of King John'. A bard sang that 'no man may ever trust him, for his heart is soft and cowardly'. Yet this evil was catalyst for a greater good, Magna Carta.

The nation's patriotic juices were stirred and the new music halls chanted, 'We don't want to fight but by jingo if we do, / We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too.' Such sentiments became known as jingoism.

On his death even The Times remarked that, 'never was an individual less regretted by his fellow creatures than this deceased king'.

Herodotus is said to have remarked, 'Every year we send ships at great cost and danger as far as Africa, to ask "Who are you? What are your laws? What is your language?"' Why is it, he asked, 'they never send ships to ask us'?

In Yorkshire's Harewood chapel, frigid effigies of fifteenth-century warriors lie on their tombs like ships at anchor, bearing silent witness to the slaughter [of the War of the Roses].

swollen bowels burst and an intolerable stench assailed the nostrils of bystanders

An Englishman's car is his castle on wheels.