Quotes by Linda Colley

Linda Colley

A British imperium enabled Scots to feel themselves peers of the Ebglish in a way still denied them in an island kingdom. The language bears that out very clearly. The English and the foreign are still all too inclined to refer to the island of Great Britain as ‘England’. But at no time have they ever customarily referred to an English empire.

Islands

Kingdoms

Peers

A fundamental reason why Britain was not torn apart by civil war after 1688 was that its inhabitants’ aggression was channelled so regularly and so remorsely into war and imperial expansion abroad.

Expansion

Torn Apart

War

An unprecedented number of uniformed males, marching, parading and engaging in mock battles in every region of Great Britain brought a pleasant frisson of excitement into many normally quiet and deeply repetitive female lives.

Battle

Males

Numbers

At one level Great Britain at the beginning of the 18th century was like the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, both three and one, and altogether something of a mystery.

Christian

Doctrine

Three

Can it be entirely accidental that the most famous fictional spy of them all, James Bond, Number 007, deadly marksman, intriguer, the ultimate man behind the curtain, sexual athlete and ruthless patriot, is also a Scot, as was the author, whose wish-fulfilment he was?

Athlete

Men

Numbers

Chilvalry’s essential function, Maurice Keen has written, is always to hold up an idealised image of armed conflict in defiance of the harsh realities of actual warfare. By definition, chivalry also reaffirms the paramount importance of custom, hierarchy and inherited rank.

Essentials

Reality

Warfare

Contrary to received wisdom, the British are not an insular people in the conventional sense – far from it. For most of their early modern and modern history, they have had more contact with more parts of the world than almost any other nation – it is just that this contact has regularly taken the form of aggressive military and commercial enterprise.

Military

People

Taken

Ever since the Reformation, the case of legislation confining Catholics had been constructed primarily to protect a nervously Protestant against what was assumed to be a fifth column in its midst… Ministers believedm with some justice, that Catholics retained an attachment to their exiled co-religionists, the princes of the House of Stuart. After the Battle of Culloden had confirmed Jacobitism’s insignificance, however, government attitudes towards Catholicism began perceptibly and logically to relax.

Attachment

Attitude

Government

For women to be supplying the soldiery with banners, flannel shirts and other material comforts was, superficially, all of a piece with their ministrations to their menfolk at home. Such contributions to the war effort were socially acceptable because they could be seen as an extension into the military sphere of the traditional female virtues of charity, nurture and needlework. Yet in reality what the women were doing represented the thin end of a far more radical wedge. Consciously or not, these female patriots were staking out a civic role for themselves. And many of them relished it.

Home

Military

War

From the 15th century to 1688, England and Wales, like Scotland, had been peripheral kingdoms in the European power game, more often at war with each other that with Continental powers, and – except under Oliver Cromwell – scarcely very successful on those occasions when they did engage the Dutch, or the French, or the Spanish.

Games

Successful

War

Follow The Behaviour University in order to get the greatest quotes from the greatest people of all time so that you can tap into your own greatness.

Achievement

Athlete

Attachment

Attitude

Battle

Britain

British History

Christian

Class

Country

Doctrine

Empires

Essentials

Expansion

Fashion

Games

Giving

Government

Hegemony

Home

Horse

Humanity

Ideas

Islands

Jobs

Kingdoms

Land

Littles

Males

Mean

Men

Military

Mind

Numbers

Past

Patriotic

Peers

People

Political

Real

Reality

Religious

Safe

Scotland

Strong

Struggle

Successful

Taken

Thinking

Three

The Future Blueprint

Tool

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

Tool

The Autobiography

Tool

The Behaviour Diary

Tool

The Dating Diary

Tool

The Relationship Therapist

Tool

Quotes by Linda Colley

Linda Colley

A fundamental reason why Britain was not torn apart by civil war after 1688 was that its inhabitants’ aggression was channelled so regularly and so remorsely into war and imperial expansion abroad.

An unprecedented number of uniformed males, marching, parading and engaging in mock battles in every region of Great Britain brought a pleasant frisson of excitement into many normally quiet and deeply repetitive female lives.

At one level Great Britain at the beginning of the 18th century was like the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, both three and one, and altogether something of a mystery.

Can it be entirely accidental that the most famous fictional spy of them all, James Bond, Number 007, deadly marksman, intriguer, the ultimate man behind the curtain, sexual athlete and ruthless patriot, is also a Scot, as was the author, whose wish-fulfilment he was?

Chilvalry’s essential function, Maurice Keen has written, is always to hold up an idealised image of armed conflict in defiance of the harsh realities of actual warfare. By definition, chivalry also reaffirms the paramount importance of custom, hierarchy and inherited rank.

Get Social with TBU

Topics by Linda Colley

Popular Tools

The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

Menu

Menu