Purcell is a composer who had a formative influence on British music - even The Who now cite him as an influence. There's an intense, dirty harmony, but there's a Louis XIV kind of elan and style, too. He had the melancholy DNA of our national folk h...
I didn't like any British music before The Beatles. For me, it was all about black American music. But then I became a successful pop singer, even though the kind of music I liked was more elitist, which is what I'm trying to get back to.
My father in the film - which we probably haven't seen in previous movies, and in British Asian movies you could probably count on one hand - he says exactly why, actually why he's frightened for his daughter. He came to this country, England, and ha...
Colonel Saito: I hate the British! You are defeated but you have no shame. You are stubborn but you have no pride. You endure but you have no courage.
Colonel Nicholson: We can teach these barbarians a lesson in Western methods and efficiency that will put them to shame. We'll show them what the British soldier is capable of doing.
Britain, today, educates 4.8 million primary school children in Britain. And we educate five million primary school children around the developing world, at a cost of 2.5 per cent of what we spend on British children.
The fact is that the British Museum had a complete specimen of a dodo in their collection up until the 18th century - it was actually mummified, skin and all - but in a fit of space-saving zeal, they actually cut off the head and they cut off the fee...
The Beatles' story is all of our stories. It is about how the youth culture emerged, the drug culture emerged, how politics rose to the fore as a universal debate. It's about rebellion, it's about the growth of the British entertainment system, the g...
I've been on both sides: the victim and the villain. I was the victimised model, and everything from my weight to my fertility was held up for discussion. And then I was the person that could garner some kind of positive outcome, by taking on the rol...
To be able to hold all four majors - the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open, PGA - all concurrently I think is the Grand Slam. But a lot of people have a different opinions on that. People think you have to win it in the same calendar year.
Many of our problems are home-grown. Gordon Brown regularly advised the rest of the world to follow his British model of growth. But the model was flawed. It led to the highest level of household debt in relation to income in the world.
Politicians.Their first thoughts are always with the loved ones of the British serviceman tragically killed in action. And whether they'll vote New Labour at the next election. There's no need to be cynical, Susan. Why not? You've got me there.
My father, a Russian translator, wanted to distinguish me by calling me Misha, the Russian diminutive of his name, Michael. My name and work as a writer specialising in the Balkans has created a myth that I have Slavic connections, but actually I am ...
This is the beginning of the end (talking about the war)... Everyone was saying... But the British Prime Minister said, "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Do you see the diffe...
No less a bold and pugnacious figure than Winston Churchill broke down and was unable to finish his remarks at the sendoff of the British Expeditionary Force into the maelstrom of World War I in Europe.
He sat there all through a history lesson about the Roman Empire, which--having lived in the Roman Empire, for the four hundred years during which it had included the British Isles--he found inaccurate and boring.
Being a fan of authentic Dada, I find today's art - what I call 'Bankers' Dada' - mind-numbingly dull. The most challenging work I've seen of late is by The British Art Resistance. Their document, 'A Call for Heroes in an Age of Cowards', is apt in t...
Someone once said that nothing costs more and yields less benefit than revenge,” Aomame said. “Winston Churchill. As I recall it, though, he was making excuses for the British Empire’s budget deficits. It has no moral significance.
British diplomats and Anglo-American types in Washington have a near-superstitious prohibition on uttering the words 'Special Relationship' to describe relations between Britain and America, lest the specialness itself vanish like a phantom at cock-c...
In our country for all her greatness there is one thing she cannot do and that is translate a person wholly out of one class into another. Perfect translation from one language into another is impossible. Class is the British language.
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.
