Diplomacy is unfashionable in the world of knee-jerk reaction and the dogmatic sound bite on television.

It is normal for politicians in all countries to profess themselves the pupils of history, anxious to draw the right lessons from her teaching.

History provides no precise guidelines.

Ten Downing Street is a house, not an office. That is its most important characteristic.

Diplomacy is unfashionable in the world of knee-jerk reaction and the dogmatic sound bite on television.

Men like Hitler and Stalin and their immediate lieutenants cannot plead in defence of their actions that these were justified by the accepted values of that time.

Margaret Thatcher, growing up in a bombed and battered Britain, derived a distrust which has grown with the years not just of Germany but of all continental Europe.