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" None of Europe's modern nations are genuinely native. "
Norman Davies
None
Modern
Europe
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" There is a real danger of the United Kingdom breaking up. There is a loss of common identity. "
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Danger
Identity
Kingdom
" Poland in the 1990s saw a surge of unrestrained, American-style capitalism. With millions of Poles living in the U.S.A., the defeat of communism led many to aim for a lifestyle derivative of Chicago or Detroit. "
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Defeat
" The historical profession is nowhere famous for its tolerance, but there are not many countries where historians can expect to pay for their opinions with penal servitude or the firing squad. "
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Opinions
Tolerance
Squad
" Our mental maps are distorted by who are the 'winners' of history and who are the powers of today. "
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History
Winners
Today
" The Euro Sceptics are the English National Party in disguise, and they have poor old David Cameron over a barrel. "
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Old
Party
Poor
" In essence, the tragedy of the Warsaw Rising resulted from a systemic breakdown of the Grand Alliance. "
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Essence
Alliance
Rising
" In the 21st century, there will probably be a reflex against the disintegration of traditional European culture. What started as a reaction will come full circle, and there will be a return to the roots. "
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Circle
Reaction
Roots
" The shores of the Black Sea lend themselves to the literary genre that may be classified as 'cultural pilgrimage,' which is not just a higher form of travel writing but which has the further mission of reporting on present conditions and supplying neglected knowledge. "
Norman Davies
Knowledge
Black
Writing
" Fifty years would seem to be time enough to prepare a definitive history of the Second World War. In an age of instant data-gathering, one might think that the historians could have arrived at a consensus for interpreting the main events of the war. In reality, no such consensus exists. "
Norman Davies
World
History
Think
" Why does a state last a thousand years? Why not 999? Why not a thousand and one? What are the events that finally bring the whole thing down? That is what I am asking. "
Norman Davies
Events
Why
Last
" I do belong to the club which doesn't see a distinction between academic history and popular history. "
Norman Davies
Club
See
Academic
" Poland was the racial laboratory of the Nazis. This is where they started to put their abhorrent theories into practice. "
Norman Davies
Laboratory
Racial
Practice
" Each side tries to legitimize their aims by appealing to history, sometimes selectively choosing episodes and other times just by inventing history. "
Norman Davies
History
Sometimes
Choosing
" It is important to remember that John Paul II was not an American or a Frenchman. "
Norman Davies
American
Paul
Important
" I can just remember the blitz of Manchester, or perhaps my father's tales about the blitz of Manchester. I can remember the blackout, the powdered eggs, and the gas masks. But I think no British person should pretend that being resident in England could count as being in the thick of the action. "
Norman Davies
Think
Remember
I Can
" I wanted to produce a book that would demonstrate not only the rich diversity of people who answered to Anders's command but also the extraordinary variety of their experiences and emotions: from death to despair, fear and longings and eventually to hope. "
Norman Davies
Hope
Diversity
Death
" I happen to belong to that group opinion which holds the break-up of the United Kingdom to be imminent. "
Norman Davies
Group
Happen
Kingdom
" Every austerity measure that Cameron and George Osborne make is being presented in Scotland as the English starving us. "
Norman Davies
Scotland
English
Us
" It's unimaginable to meet a Pole or a German who does not know about the history of their country. But lots of English people don't know the difference between Britain and England. "
Norman Davies
History
Know
Country
" One of the few things that can be said for certain about Europe's prehistoric peoples is that they all came from somewhere else. "
Norman Davies
Few
Europe
Things
" The Russian myths of the Second World War are still intact. "
Norman Davies
Second
Myths
Still
" History must give the Poles the principal credit for bringing the Soviet bloc to its knees. "
Norman Davies
Principal
Knees
History
" All states and nations, however great, bloom for a season and are replaced. "
Norman Davies
States
Season
Bloom
" Nearly all interested parties think I write too shortly on the subjects that interest them most. "
Norman Davies
Think
Interest
Write
" In 1945, when the Second World War technically ends in Poland, the incoming Soviet army liberates some groups of people but begins to oppress the general population, in some ways more harshly than it had happened before. "
Norman Davies
World
More
Army
" For people familiar with Eastern Europe, Marci Shore's 'The Taste of Ashes' is, in spite of its subject matter, delicious. A professor at Yale with much experience in Eastern Europe, she writes with great sureness of touch, weaving personal recollections with intellectual commentary and ideas with emotions, including her own. "
Norman Davies
She
People
Ideas
" Myth-making is absolutely necessary to create the simplified images that people live off. "
Norman Davies
Live
Necessary
Create
" States seem to have a natural life cycle, and anything can occur to change them into something else, and that something might be no bad thing. "
Norman Davies
Anything
Life
Change
" Europe's fragmentation puts the wider historical picture beyond reach. "
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Picture
Historical
Beyond
" The Black Sea is Eastern Europe's counterpart to the Mediterranean. "
Norman Davies
Europe
Sea
Black