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" I am ashamed to say that both my children knew Stalin before they knew Thomas the Tank Engine. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

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" A reforming liberal leader in Russia is the Holy Grail of Kremlinology, but the search for one is as misguided and hopeless as that for the relic of the Last Supper. "

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" No one can take away the experience of Yeltsin's freedoms, but Russian democracy will never follow Western models: other authoritarian 'controlled democracies' - Turkey, Taiwan, Mexico - ultimately developed into democracies. But it took decades. "

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" While most know the young Stalin was a seminarian, few realize that he was also a Georgian patriot, a published romantic poet. "

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" It's the mix of the trivial and the great events that make up history. It's the low things about high people that make it fascinating, and that's why it would be a shame to exclude the trivial things. That mixing up is not just at the heart of history. It's at the heart of how to live a great life. "

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" The Europeans do tend to delegitimize Israel and turn Israel into a dirty word, which is unforgivable. "

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" I always wanted to write a history of Jerusalem. "

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" One of the strange things about doing publicity is that a mistake in a newspaper profile long ago is repeated and amplified over time. "

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" I'm the last person who would end up doing something that needs meticulous compilation of facts. It's totally against my character. I live by impulse. I'm totally ill-suited to writing history books. "

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" Saddam Hussein admired, studied, and copied Stalin, the paragon of modern dictators. "

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" I read many wonderful novels, though I now find the idea of literary fiction obsolete. "

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" Trump wants to be the first American tsar. With his hero worship of Putin, his admiration for the apparent omnipotence of the Kremlin, schoolboyish crush on Putin's gangster swagger and his contempt for democracy, Trump wants to rule with his family, taking decisions purely because he's right about everything like a tsar. "

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" To make a Frankenstein monster of a complex character like Stalin would have been too simplistic. I wanted to show who he was and, if you like, how he happened. "

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" The Russian Revolution mobilized a popular passion across the world based on Marxism-Leninism, fueled by messianic zeal. It was, perhaps, after the three Abrahamic religions, the greatest millenarian rapture of human history. "

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" Under Stalin, artists weren't dissidents; all they hoped was to survive and write. "

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" Lenin had just reflected that the revolution would never happen in his lifetime when in February 1917, hungry crowds in Petrograd overthrew Nicholas II while the revolutionaries were abroad, exiled, or infiltrated by the secret police. "

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" When we were in school, we were told that Stalin was a madman who got control of Europe, which teaches you nothing. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" If only all straight weddings could be somehow gay-ified. "

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" We have far too many Tudors. Henry VIII is far too over-rated. He's become the ultimate brand name, like the Marks & Spencers of a high street of British history. I'm more interested in King Herod. "

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" I can never resist Ruritanian intrigue: I was once charged with the task of offering the Estonian throne to Prince Edward. Feeling like a Dumas Musketeer on a mission, I did so, but he turned it down. "

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" There are few words in Russian for the Western concept of 'law,' but there are legions of words for connections, helping people from one's neck of the woods. "

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" As colonial puppeteer and successful restorer of Russia as imperial superpower, Mr. Putin is Stalin's consummate heir. "

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" In the new Georgia, Stalin is no longer Georgian. He's a Russian emperor. "

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" Alexander II really used autocracy well to negotiate the freeing of the serfs in 1861. "

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" Mr. Putin presents himself as a czar - and like any czar, he fears revolution above all else. "

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" I love the heat and the excitement of Israel, and I will always love Jerusalem. "

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" I was driving across Georgia with a warlord and his bodyguards riding shotgun with their Kalashnikovs in a convoy of Mercedes and Land Rovers. The guy put on Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon' on a cassette, which they played on loudspeakers as we raced across the mountains, and I remember thinking, 'This sure beats respectable life in England.' "

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" It is a characteristic of potentates that they don't succumb to peaceful retirement. Instead, they hold power in their hoary fists as judgment and grip weaken, destroying any successors except family members. "

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" Historical fiction is simply fiction set in the past, and should be judged as such. "

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" With popular rulers, the wife can become the guardian of their greatness: Peter the Great was succeeded by his wife, Catherine I. Sometimes the wives are an improvement. "

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" In 1942, the Germans were running out of fuel. They were advancing so fast across the grasslands, the hot grasslands of south Russia, and the Russians were running out of tanks. And so both of them turned to cavalry, and there were great cavalry battles on the grasslands. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore