When researching my new book, A Shellshocked Nation: Britain Between the Wars, I watched a lot of British movies from the 1920s and 30s. Here are some of my favourite quotes from those films.

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Alice White: You and your Scotland Yard! If it weren’t for Edgar Wallace, nobody would ever have heard of it.
Blackmail (Alfred Hitchcock, 1929)

Ursula: You’ve been reading too many detective stories.
Huey: Yes, but so do lots of intelligent people.
Trunk Crime (Roy Boulting, 1939)

Squibs Hopkins: Blast – in the best sense – all battleships. Let us have better babies.
Squibs M.P. (George Pearson, 1923)

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Chancellor: It seems incredible to me that anybody should be allowed to rob the chancellor of the exchequer with impunity.
Hornleigh: Quite so, sir. Generally the other way round.
Inspector Hornleigh (Eugene Forde, 1938)

Cynthia Hatch: How do you live?
Peter Middleton: Hand to mouth. I’m not particular whose hand it is, as long as it’s my mouth.
Something Always Happens (Michael Powell, 1934)

Jane Benson: Poverty is a grinding thing. It’s an ugly thing.
Over the Moon (Thornton Freeland, 1939)

Carol Howard: I’m fed up with routine and drabness. Daily life all cut out of the same pattern. I want something exciting, something new and interesting and romantic.
Love from a Stranger (Rowland V. Lee, 1937)

Robert Tisdall: She’s got a nerve!
Detective Sergeant Miller: She certainly has.
Young and Innocent (Alfred Hitchcock, 1937)

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Dr Syn: I found you in wretchedness and poverty, deprived by harsh laws and heavy taxes of the simple comforts all men have a right to. I took upon myself to change all that at the expense of the Revenue. What I did, I did for the good of all.
Doctor Syn (Roy William Neill, 1937)

Snyderling: What was the first country to come out of the Depression? England. Why? Dignity.
Thunder in the City (Marion Gering, 1937)

Gilbert Redman: Never climb a fence if you can sit on it – it’s an old Foreign Office proverb.
The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938)

Rail passenger: Each small town gives of its best and gets nothing in return. Children are forced to leave their parents and go away to the city and their lives become a series of occasional visits to the ones they love. I hate cities!
The Green Cockatoo (William Cameron Menzies, 1937)

Horace: Scotland for the Scottish!
Frank: Oh, does somebody else want it?
Storm in a Teacup (Ian Dalrymple & Victor Savile, 1937)

Sam Higgins: Nice place, Wales!
The Phantom Light (Michael Powell, 1935)

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Henry VIII: If those French and Germans don’t stop killing each other, the whole of Europe will be in ruins.
The Private Life of Henry VIII (Alexander Korda, 1933)

Francis Drake: Philip has swallowed the Netherlands. Soon he may swallow France. How long do you think England will hold?
Drake of England (Arthur B. Woods, 1935)

King Philip II of Spain: Only by fear can the people be made to do their duty.
Fire Over England (William K. Howard, 1937)

Bosambo: I have learnt the secret of government from your lordship. A king ought not to be feared but loved by his people.
Sanders: That is the secret of the British.
Sanders of the River (Zoltán Korda, 1935)

British prime minister: Let the people of the British Empire and the people of the United States of America pledge themselves to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and no power in the world can be strong enough to defeat them.
The Tunnel (Maurice Elvey, 1935)

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John Cabal: We don’t approve of independent sovereign states.
The Boss: You don’t approve?
John Cabal: We intend to stop them.
Things to Come (Alexander Korda, 1936)

Mr Robertson: Pretty tough job, being a king nowadays.
Service for Ladies (Alexander Korda, 1932)

Captain Carruthers: It’s the old story of the mad dreamers of this world who are half-empire-builders and half-gangsters. If they succeed, the history books call them great.
Mrs Carruthers: And if they don’t?
Captain Carruthers: Another gangster sinks into oblivion.
The Drum (Zoltán Korda, 1938)

Bob Lawrence: Why should we care if some foreign statesman we’ve never even heard of were assassinated?
Gibson: In June 1914, had you ever heard of a place called Sarajevo? Of course you hadn’t. I doubt if you’d even heard of the Archduke Ferdinand.
The Man Who Knew too Much (Alfred Hitchcock, 1934)

Heckler: These ’ere pacifists never done nobody no good.
The Four Just Men (Walter Forde, 1939)

Staggers: You’re after justice and logic. There ain’t no justice and there ain’t no logic. The world ain’t made that way. Everything’s luck, see? And good temper – and if you can take a joke. The whole of life’s a joke.
St Martin’s Lane (Tim Whelan, 1938)

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