Michael, Tony, Enoch and Julian
It struck me that, seen together, Foot, Benn, Powell and Amery represented the worst of their generation, escapologists from reality who were unwilling to stare the truth of Britain's position in the face and who made a career by bamboozling the impressionable.

Around me on the Tory benches and in the faces opposite you could sense a palpable longing for great parliamentary men to fill the vacant stage, and this was all they had, Thatcher being a better leader than she was a parliamentarian.

It was sad to see how they sat transfixed by these musty puppets, mistaking their jerkings and posturings for great oratory. You could see people being transported in their imaginations back to the grand old days.

Never mind that Benn was talking sophomoric rubbish about robber barons, that Powell was indulging in incendiary simplicities on Northern Ireland, or that Michael Foot was getting away with yet another piece of intellectual fraudulence - think of the performance!

George Walden Lucky George (1999)