Quotes from Hugh Thomas

The experience of the Mayas is one more reminder that any interpretation of human evolution based on the idea of unilineal progress forwards (or upwards) is an illusion. Peoples decline as well as rise.

Yet to read into the past the morality of our time (or the lack of it) may not make the historian's task any easier.

The philosophy of the discoveries, the emigration, and the colonisation was Christianity.

The rising began at Melilla, the easternmost city of Spanish Morocco. In the night of 16–17 July, General Romerales, the local commander, looked for suspicious activity.

The tragedy of his last months was a natural expression of the tragedy of Spain, where culture, eloquence and creativity were giving way to militarism, propaganda, and death. Before long, there was even a concentration camp called 'Unamuno' for republican prisoners.15

The first concern derived from the fact that the Mexica had

There is nothing that I should more fear, nor any kind of death that might threaten me, which would not be more supportable for me than to live without you and be separated by a great distance. I would rather die or be eaten by fish in the sea or devored on land by cannibals than to consume myself in perpetual mourning and unceasing sorrow awaiting not my husband but his letters.

That evening at nine o'clock, Lieutenant José Castillo of the assault guards was leaving home, in the Calle Augusto Figueroa, in the centre of Madrid, to begin his duty.

As he left home on 12 July, a hot Sunday of the Madrid summer, Castillo was shot dead by four men with revolvers, who swiftly escaped into the crowded streets.24

Fernando Condés, an intimate friend of Castillo. Condés was broken by Castillo's death.

After a quarter of a mile, Luis Cuenca, a young Galician socialist sitting beside the politician, shot him in the back of his neck. Neither Condés nor anyone else had expected this dénouement.

The middle class in Spain were aghast at this murder of the leader of the parliamentary opposition by members of the regular police

The middle class in Spain were aghast at this murder of the leader of the parliamentary opposition by members of the regular police. It was now natural to assume that the government could not control its own agents

Mola at last gave a firm date for the rising: his telegrams read: 'On the 15th last, at 4 A.M., Helen gave birth to a beautiful child.' That meant when interpreted that the rising would begin in Morocco on 18 July at five o'clock in the morning.