David C. Douglas

"The search for wisdom in precedent flourished as if naturally among a people whom foreign observers at a later date have praised especially for its reliance upon tradition rather than upon those wide general theories which claim universal validity."

"G. H. Hardy in his apology for pure mathematics placed high among his arguments that the subject was "harmless". I can – alas – make no such plea for history. The correct use of historical study may be debatable, but the consequences of its abuse have been made plain for all the world to see. The propagandist use of history in the Germany of yesterday, in the Russia of today, is a fact of incalculable importance to the future fate of the world. An ignorance of history inviting its fabrications by the unscrupulous cannot be regarded simply as an innocuous academic failure. It has affected all our lives. It has led directly to Belsen and Buchenwald and Katyn Wood. It has contributed its full share to two major European disasters."

"The philosophy of history is a fascinating and important subject, but with the rarest exceptions its chief English exponents have not been historians. Life is short, and the fervent historian has much to do. He has to discover; he has to create. The nature of his subject he must leave for others to discuss. "I do not believe in the philosophy of history," wrote the great William Stubbs, "and therefore I do not believe in Buckle.""

"Perhaps I may also be permitted to add how much the lawyer can teach the historian about the use of evidence, and certainly I learnt most of the little I know about the criticism of medieval charters from a practising lawyer at work from ten to five in the office of the Treasury Solicitor."

"I claim for students of history that their study – if properly conducted – can strip the mind of illusions, leading them from heady abstraction back to men and women in their infinite diversity – warning them, by reference to actuality, against this or that ideology which oversimplifies the past under a single formula or promises the millenium the day after tomorrow."

"No one knows more than Douglas about the early history of Normandy and here we have a magisterial survey of the duchy, both before and after the Conquest. No one leads more confidently through the genealogical maze and uses family connections to better effect."