Forever poised between a cliché and an indiscretion. — Harold Macmillan

"It is very common with individuals or estates when they run into financial difficulties, to find that they have to sell some of their assets. First, the Georgian silver goes, then all that nice furniture that used to be in the saloon. Then the Canalettos go."

"Id like that translated, if I may."

"Nonsense, there are no clubs around Victoria."

"This divide between the American and British attitudes to diplomacy was not absolute, of course. Diplomats on both sides were skeptical about letting their leaders loose at the summit, and not all Americans believed that dialogue with the Soviets was pointless. But Republican exploitation of the Cold War and of the Yalta myths made it particularly difficult for U.S. policymakers to show much flexibility in the 1950s, whatever their inclinations. Consequently the initiative for summitry tended to come from Europe. On the Western side in the late 1950s it was Harold Macmillan, the British prime minister, who made the run for a summit— rather surprisingly, it might seem, considering his past. In 1938 he had been one of the few Tory opponents of Munich. He felt Yalta had been “a failure and a disaster” because “in an atmosphere of fervid rush and hurry, vast decisions were reached in a few crowded days.” And he noted in his diary in February 1957, weeks after taking office: “I am said to have lost touch with public opinion in England because I have not already set out for Moscow to see Khrushchev. All this is pure Chamberlainism. It is raining umbrellas.” But, as Churchill once observed, “how much more attractive a top-level meeting seems when one has reached the top!” Once into his stride as premier, Macmillan saw the political benefits of summitry and in February 1959 he contrived a personal visit to Moscow. Politically the trip was a great success, helping Macmillan win an election by a landslide later that year. But Britain, like France, was no longer a serious presence at the top table. The real momentum for a summit in the late 1950s came not from Western capitals but from the Kremlin."

"So there you are – you can see what it is like. The cameras hot, probing eye, these monstrous machines and their attendants – a kind of twentieth century torture chamber, thats what it is. But I must try to forget about that, and imagine that you are sitting here in the room with me."

"We must rely on the power of the nuclear deterrent or we must throw up the sponge. (1957)Force V: The history of Britains airborne deterrent, by Andrew Brookes. Janes Publishing Co Ltd; First Edition 1 Jan. 1982, , p.69."