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Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Amazon.co.uk Review
The second edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations was brought out in time for the UK's 2001 election. It's fortunate to have as its editor Antony Jay, most famous as joint author of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, also extremely experienced as writer and broadcaster, whose work has so often focused on the political arena. He has obviously used his contacts well. To take but one example, the source for Israeli diplomat Abba Eban's verdict on the British Foreign Office, "A hotbed of cold feet," is given as "in conversation with Antony Jay". The editor's erudition is usefully employed in numerous brief notes which supply the contexts that make sense of many important remarks that would otherwise be lost on less learned readers. "Epitaphs", "Last Words", "Misquotations", "Slogans" and six other piquant categories have their own handy special sections. The ranks of those quoted stretch from ancient luminaries such as Aristophanes, Cicero and Marcus Aurelius to modern novelists--Anthony Burgess, for example: "The US presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones"--via an eclectic selection of notables including Sojourner Truth and Jane Austen--"From politics, it was an easy step to silence". Politicians and political philosophers from the English-speaking world get their full due. All the greats have extensive sections under their names, most particularly Churchill, Disraeli, Burke, Bagehot, Jefferson and Lincoln. The flipside of this Anglo-American focus is the brevity of the entries for continental Europeans. When a minor British celebrity such as the late Alan Clark gets nine quotations to Boris Yeltsin's two and Gorbachev's three, and Disraeli's selection outnumbers Karl Marx's by 98 quotes to 13, one wonders if things might not have been differently weighted. English Eurosceptics may applaud. With over 4,500 quotations to graze through, however--in all other respects masterfully selected, it would be churlish to complain. --David Pickering
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