Norman Davies

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

“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 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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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 Bri...”

“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 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.”

“Young people have to learn in a cocoon filled with false optimism. Unlike their parents and grandparents, they grow up with very little sense of the pitiless passage of time.”

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

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

“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...”

“Capacity of human societies both to absorb and to discard cultures is much underestimated.”

“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...”

“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 wri...”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”