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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. "

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

" The most noticeable thing about the Soviet collapse was that it followed a natural course. "

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

" 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. "

" The advance of standard English culture was less assisted by government policy than by the sheer weight, wealth, and number of England's well-established cultural institutions. "

" One of the problems in the Ukrainian crisis is that very few Westerners know their history, or if they know it, what they learn is what we call the Russian version of history. "

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

" The Black Sea is Eastern Europe's counterpart to the Mediterranean. "

" It's the historian's job not to ridicule the myths, but to show the difference between myth and reality. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" Bulgaria was the only Axis country to deflect insistent German demands for the deportation of its Jews. "

" 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 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. "

" Europe's fragmentation puts the wider historical picture beyond reach. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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