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" One might have thought that 70 years was time enough to work out what really happened in 1939. It isn't the case. Misunderstandings and misinformation abound. "

Norman Davies

Time

Years

Enough

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" History must give the Poles the principal credit for bringing the Soviet bloc to its knees. "

" I first heard of General Anders and his army more than 50 years ago. I admired him then, and I admire him still; and I feel a special bond with the men, women and children whom he rescued from hunger, disease, and official abuse. Theirs is a story of endurance and fortitude that gives one faith in the human spirit. "

" All states and nations, however great, bloom for a season and are replaced. "

" 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. "

" Nothing stands still. Everything is moving in some direction or another. "

" 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

Army

" 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. "

" At the end of the Roman Empire, in the Byzantine period, the empire shrinks and shrinks until it consists of one city, Constantinople, and the Ottoman Turks can encircle it. "

" One of the few things that can be said for certain about Europe's prehistoric peoples is that they all came from somewhere else. "

" There is a real danger of the United Kingdom breaking up. There is a loss of common identity. "

" Our mental maps are distorted by who are the 'winners' of history and who are the powers of today. "

" I don't see why a book shouldn't be intellectually sound, entertaining, and fun to read. Historians who write academic history, which is unreadable, are basically wasting their time. "

" I always needle a bit when people say I'm a champion of the Poles, because I've always had a very multinational view of Poland. "

" The Russian myths of the Second World War are still intact. "

" Northern Ireland must, in future, be absorbed into the Irish republic. Wales and Scotland must advance from devolution to full independent status. The four nations of these islands must commit themselves absolutely to the project of a United Europe. "

" So long as classical education and classical prejudices prevailed, educated Englishmen inevitably saw ancient Britain as an alien land. "

" Historical change is like an avalanche. The starting point is a snow-covered mountainside that looks solid. All changes take place under the surface and are rather invisible. "

" 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. "

" Myth-making is absolutely necessary to create the simplified images that people live off. "

" Each side tries to legitimize their aims by appealing to history, sometimes selectively choosing episodes and other times just by inventing history. "

" Serenity is the balance between good and bad, life and death, horrors and pleasures. Life is, as it were, defined by death. If there wasn't death of things, then there wouldn't be any life to celebrate. "

" The last years of fading communism provided an ideal environment for Poland's Catholic Church, which acted as an umbrella for dissenters of all sorts. "

" Every austerity measure that Cameron and George Osborne make is being presented in Scotland as the English starving us. "

Norman Davies

Scotland

English

" 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. "

" The Euro Sceptics are the English National Party in disguise, and they have poor old David Cameron over a barrel. "

" Poland was the racial laboratory of the Nazis. This is where they started to put their abhorrent theories into practice. "

" History is very much bound up in family experience. "

Norman Davies

Experience

Family

" Nearly all interested parties think I write too shortly on the subjects that interest them most. "

" None of Europe's modern nations are genuinely native. "

" Under Lenin, hardly less than under Stalin, historians harbored critical opinions at their peril. The writing, let alone the publication, of political diaries was virtually impossible. "