Quotes from Andrew Roberts

impotent misery

Paul Nash's 1941 painting The Battle of Britain

He pronounced that novels were 'for ladies' maids' and ordered the librarian, 'Only give them history books. Men should read nothing else.

His men knew they could trust him not to be officious over such an unfortunate (though by no means isolated) friendly-fire incident, and to tell the dead Guardsman's family that he had died heroically. Sometimes in war, as he was to say later, the truth has to be defended by a bodyguard of lies.

The Daily Express declares that Britain will not be involved in a European war this year, or next year either'.

The Italian city-state of Genoa had nominally ruled Corsica for over two centuries, but rarely tried to extend her control beyond the coastal towns into the mountainous interior, where the Corsicans were fiercely independent. In 1755 Corsica's charismatic nationalist leader, Pasquale Paoli, proclaimed an independent republic, a notion that became

The idea of God is very useful,' Napoleon said, 'to maintain good order, to keep men in the path of virtue and to keep them from crime.

That's war: very high in the morning and very low in the evening: from triumph to failure is only one step.

Tuve la impresión de hallarme en sintonía con el destino y de que toda mi vida pasada no había sido sino un largo preparativo para esta hora y para esta prueba [...]. No se me podía reprochar ni que hubiera declarado la guerra ni que me faltara preparación para librarla. Pensé que sabía muchas cosas sobre el particular, y estaba seguro de que no iba a fracasar».

Here we have a state … nearly half a million of whose citizens,' he said, 'reduced to servitude for their political opinions, are rotting and freezing through the Arctic night; toiling to death in forests, mines and quarries, many for no more than indulging in that freedom of thought which has gradually raised man above the beast.'152 This was written over twenty years before Alexander Solzhenitsyn started writing The Gulag Archipelago.

He appealed to the pride of those he would conquer but gave them no doubt as to the consequences of resistance. 'The French army loves and respects all peoples, especially the simple and virtuous inhabitants of the mountains,' read a proclamation to the Tyrolese that month. 'But should you ignore your own interests and take up arms, we shall be terrible as the fire from heaven.'6

The Idea of the University, Cardinal John Henry Newman's great work defining how the republic of the mind should be governed, hailed the importance of increasing the breadth of understanding, promoting excellence in scholarship, advancing student dialogue and freedom of expression and inquiry.

In his life of Marlborough, Churchill had accused the notorious 2nd Earl of Sunderland of being 'one of those dangerous beings who, with many gifts of mind, have no principle of action; who do not care what is done, so long as they are at the centre of it; to whom bustle, excitement, intrigue, are the breath of life; and whose dance from one delirium to another seems almost necessary to their sanity.

Without all this self-control, do you think I could have done all I've done?33

One of the pieces of advice that Churchill had given Georges Clemenceau during the Great War had been 'to forget old quarrels … In England we … make many muddles, but we always keep more or less together.

ministry of justice

Winston Churchill once observed that in wartime, truth is so precious that she needs to be defended by a bodyguard of lies.)

Me dicen que hay algunos individuos a los que es preciso aislar por la comisión de viles agresiones. De ser así, solo tengo que manifestar una cosa: "¡Adelante!". Si un hombre público permitiera que la simple amenaza de la violencia personal alterara el rumbo de sus planes sería indigno de la más mínima muestra de respeto o confianza».55

when an MP told him that the public demanded all-out bombing of German civilians, especially in Berlin, Churchill replied, 'My dear sir, this is a military and not a civilian war. You and others may desire to kill women and children. We desire (and have succeeded in our desire) to destroy German military objectives. I quite appreciate your point. But my motto is "Business before pleasure.

No man is considered just and virtuous who does not know whence he came and wither he is going. – Napoleon

provocative humour'.

When the mob gains the day, it ceases to be any longer the mob. It is then called the nation. If it does not, why, then some are executed, and they are called the canaille, rebels, thieves and so forth.' Napoleon to Dr Barry O'Meara on St Helena

The true conquests, the only ones that cause no regret, are those made over ignorance.'68

Winston, who executed a tour-de-force, a brilliant bit of acting and exposition