NORMAN DAVIES

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.

I happen to belong to that group opinion which holds the break-up of the United Kingdom to be imminent.

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

Nearly all interested parties think I write too shortly on the subjects that interest them most.

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.

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.

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

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

People don't see very often their death coming... Look at the French Revolution: The king of France was thinking in the 1780s, 'We're doing rather better than my father in the 1770s.'

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.

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.

States seem to have a natural life cycle, and anything can occur to change them into something else, and that something might be no bad thing.

I find myself sick to death, tired of arguing about details with people who don't know basic facts.

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

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.

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.

It's our vanity that makes us think that what forms part of our world today must be stable and secure.

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.

Fifty years would seem to be time enough to prepare a definitive history of the Second World War. In an age of instant data-gathering, one might think that the historians could have arrived at a consensus for interpreting the main events of the war. In reality, no such consensus exists.

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

It was in the 20th century that national sovereignty really ruled the roost, and the E.U. was formed to cure that.

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

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

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.