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" 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. "

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" 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. "

" There is history in condoms, there is history in lampshades, there is history in everything. "

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

" I first came across the Anders Army story by accident. When I first went to live in Oxford in the 1960s, I discovered that some of my close neighbours had been on the Anders trail. "

" 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. "

" I do belong to the club which doesn't see a distinction between academic history and popular history. "

" In essence, the tragedy of the Warsaw Rising resulted from a systemic breakdown of the Grand Alliance. "

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

" The one certainly for anyone in the path of an avalanche is this: standing still is not an option. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The E.U. is an organization that was created after the Second World War for calming down the nationalism of member states, and it did so very successfully. "

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

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

" Any historian worth their salt should be aware of wars, conflicts, catastrophes. They happen. This is part of the panorama. "

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

" The United Kingdom is not, and never has been, a nation state. "

" In the years of the Red Terror that followed the Bolshevik Revolution, the voice of dissent was stifled by universal denunciations, house searches, and preventive arrests. "

" The 'politics of memory' policy appears to work largely by insinuation. "

" 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. "

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

" Poland is the natural bridge between East and West. "

" Nowadays, it is no longer possible to maintain that the Nazi-Soviet pact of 23 August 1939 was a fiction invented by bourgeois-imperialist enemies. Everyone has seen the film clips of Herr Ribbentrop landing in Moscow, and of Stalin smiling broadly as Ribbentrop and Molotov signed up side by side. "

" It was in the 20th century that national sovereignty really ruled the roost, and the E.U. was formed to cure that. "

" 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. "

" The idea that historians write the definitive version of something that will last for all time is less current than it used to be. "

" Only by painting the great panorama of history, can the great history-reading public be entertained or satisfied. "

" The question is whether a confident Europe will be a rival for North America - or whether they will work together and become a more unified bloc. "

" It's our vanity that makes us think that what forms part of our world today must be stable and secure. "

" Traditionally, historians thought in terms of invasions: the Celts took over the islands, then the Romans, then the Anglo-Saxons. It now seems much more likely that the resident population doesn't change as much as thought. The people stay put but are reculturalized by some new dominant culture. "