Quotes from Norman Davies

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

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.

It is important to remember that John Paul II was not an American or a Frenchman.

Northern Ireland must, in future, be absorbed into the Irish republic. Wales and Scotland must advance from devolution to full independent status. The four nations of these islands must commit themselves absolutely to the project of a United Europe.

History is very much bound up in family experience.

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

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

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.

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 Chicago or Detroit.

I don't see why a book shouldn't be intellectually sound, entertaining, and fun to read. Historians who write academic history, which is unreadable, are basically wasting their time.

Serenity is the balance between good and bad, life and death, horrors and pleasures. Life is, as it were, defined by death. If there wasn't death of things, then there wouldn't be any life to celebrate.

Poland is the natural bridge between East and West.

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

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

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

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.

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

Winners of wars get a standing start in the post-war stakes of remembrance.

Our mental maps are distorted by who are the 'winners' of history and who are the powers of today.

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

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 British person should pretend that being resident in England could count as being in the thick of the action.

A bad historian is even more dangerous than dead documentary wood.

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.