Fellows Of The British Academy

"Art always penetrates the particular fissures in one’s psychic life."

"In Gilgamesh the human formed from clay is a wild man, with flowing hair (possibly all over his body) and the strength and manner of life of the animals. In Genesis the clay human is created "in the image of God" and has from the beginning the status of one who is not a companion to the other animals but of one who dominates them."

"On the other side of anger at those who either peddled false visions of security or incited irrational fears of death, Lucretius offered a feeling of liberation and the power to stare down what had once seemed so menacing. What human beings can and should do, he wrote, is to conquer their fears, accept the fact that they themselves and all the things they encounter are transitory, and embrace the beauty and the pleasure of the world."

"The quintessential emblem of religion—and the clearest manifestation of the perversity that lies at its core—is the sacrifice of a child by a parent."

"Everyone understood that Latin learning was inseparable from whipping. One educational theorist of the time speculated that the buttocks were created in order to facilitate the learning of Latin."

"The Government spokesmen...insist that, once the assembly is established, the SNP will wither away... Thanks to the assembly, Scotch nationalism will have been scotched. The leaders of the SNP do not agree with this reasoning. If they did, they would oppose the assembly as an unacceptable substitute for their own essential demands, a stone offered instead of bread. In fact they have decided to vote for the assembly, confident that they can use it as a stepping-stone towards their own objective. For after all, they can say, the opportunities of making trouble in the assembly will be many. There can be disputes over the spending of the money, disputes over the restraints on the assembly, both political and financial. Even practical incompetence can be useful; for in every case the blame can be concentrated on a very convenient scapegoat, the reserved powers of Westminster. In this way the assembly, which has been devised to halt the advance of the SNP, will be an excellent means of accelerating that advance: an advance far beyond the limited aims of the government: an advance to sovereignty."

"To this the government reply is, in effect, "wait and see". We are assured that once the sensible Scots people have elected sensible, practical men to represent them in the assembly, all these grim forebodings will prove mistaken. The assembly-men will settle down and make good laws within the limits set, and the claims of the SNP will dissolve in mere noise."

"The Regius Professor's methods of quotation might also do harm to his reputation as a serious historian, if he had one."

"Allusions to "hidden counsels" and "mysterious reasons" are almost always the mark of doctrinal incoherence."

"The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion. The principal enemies of human happiness are inordinate desire—the fantasy of attaining something that exceeds what the finite mortal world allows—and gnawing fear."

"Perhaps the most recurring and paradoxical trigger of change in human society has been war."

"The second amendment, passed in 1791, allowing US citizens access to arms, was manageable when most firearms were muskets that took minutes to load."

"Given the current bitter polarisation of political allegiances, it is important to remember that national groupings have never been homogeneous and are rarely static. Of course, there are some persistent habits and patterns of thought and behaviour in all long-standing states. But countries and their populations are not just mixed in terms of ethnicity, politics, religion and much more, they also change over time, sometimes rapidly and radically."

"Consider the terrible outbreak of plague in the 14th century known as the Black Death. Europe suffered disproportionately, losing perhaps 50 per cent of its total population. One result of this, however, was that the living standards and wages of many of those who survived seem to have improved. This, it has been suggested, led in time to a marked increase in Europeans’ food consumption and demand for consumer goods. And this rise in demand may well in turn have contributed to the increasing number of European trading voyages across the world’s oceans in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries."

"The men who dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 were deploying technology that had taken decades to develop. Nonetheless, in carrying out that act, these US airmen did effect an almost immediate transformation in the nature of warfare and in attitudes towards it."

"One of the ways in which all universities could contribute substantially to their home societies is by helping students obtain a better understanding of the development and interdependencies over time of our seemingly fragmented globe."

"Dramatic in their scope though the maritime empires once were, it is overland empires that have proved more resilient, and variations of them are still with us. The United States, Russia, China and India call themselves nation-states, but all of them are in reality products of, and marked by, different imperial enterprises; and their respective rulers on occasion still behave accordingly. Think of Donald Trump’s casual suggestion last August that the US purchase Greenland. At the time, many put this down to Trump being Trump. In fact, he was acting in conformity with many of his predecessors. US presidents proposed purchasing Greenland in the 1860s and 1940s, and American politicians did succeed in buying other vast tracts of land, Alaska, for instance, and the huge Louisiana Purchase in 1803."

"The life of a historian or any other academic is not very interesting - in fact it's quite boring. I read a great deal as a child..."

"In this globalized world, there is no such thing as independence."

"I think one of the things that it is most important for historians to do is to deconstruct myths, and that when you get nationalist historiography, as in Serbia for instance, casting people in the role of permanent victims, and creating a very narrow focus, that’s really dangerous. It seems to me that our role is constantly to question the orthodoxy of the day."

"...In this globalized world, independence no longer exists. It is gladdening to see that we are part of a world in which we are all linked. There is also a thing called generosity: any people that thinks only of itself and is not generous with others is doing itself harm in the long run."

"I think it’s terribly important for the historian to take the alternative point of view to the fashionable one, and present the options. For instance, the assumption in much of the 19th and 20th centuries was that the centralised nation state was the culmination of a millennium of European history. What we now see as a result of the development of the European Community, of globalisation, of corporate institutions, and transnational corporate institutions, is that the nation state has been put under increasing pressure from above. And at the same time, and partly as a consequence of that, there’s increasing pressure from what you might call the under-represented or suppressed ethnic groups, regions and so on. So we’re getting these pressures on the 19th/20th century nation state both from above and from below."

"If you knew for instance, that British had been in Iraq in the 1920’s, and had run into problems there, this might at least make you pause before taking major policy decisions."

"...As there was a growing pressure to publish, and publish to a deadline – which I think is a disaster, and has been an intellectual disaster..."

"...I believe that one of the great contributions of British historians of the 20th century to history and the historical profession has been their willingness to look beyond the British Isles."

"...In Oxford there was and is an enormous commitment to individual teaching, or teaching in very small numbers, and a real interest in the intellectual development of undergraduates."

"...The whole trend towards rather nit-picking revisionism. The old big picture often presented by Marxist or marxisant historians began to be eroded by a new generation, and I think the result all too often has been a narrowing of focus, a fragmenting of the discipline. And my whole life I’ve been trying to save the big picture and promote its virtues and its importance. I think at this moment we may be seeing a shift back to something rather larger, as against microhistory, and revisionist mini-history. There has been a growing realisation of the importance of a wider framework, and that framework may be pan-European, it may be Atlantic history, or increasingly, global history."

"I’ve always tried to keep in mind the big picture, which I believe is one of the biggest contributions of Marxist or marxisant historians to the historiography of the twentieth century. For all the flaws in the Marxist approach – and I could never accept the determinism that one finds even in Braudel (perhaps because of the influence of Butterfield I was always impressed by the role of personality and contingency in the development of historical events) – I was very aware of the interactions, imitations and parallel developments resulting from what in many respects were similar social and economic backgrounds."

"As you write, it doesn’t matter what age you are. I think I’m a better historian now, at 75, than I was at 25."

"The Bourbons imposed an authoritarian rule in the 18th century, shutting down the regional parliaments and ruling from the center, making a balance between the innate diversity of Spain and the concept of a united Spain."

"In the second half of the 17th century, the Catalans saw that the relationship with Spain had failed, and so they rebelled against Philip V; then they realized that the French were no different. But in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Catalans began to see the opportunities that being in Spain presented. I think that, like the Scots, they took advantage of those opportunities. But historians are not prophets, and it now looks as though our two countries could break up."

"For many years Madrid's policies were mistaken. If you compare the union of Scotland and England in 1707, for instance, with the Bourbons and Catalonia, you'll see that England immediately involved Scotland in its empire project. A great many Scots held important positions in government, as well as leading the economy over the following centuries. This did not happen with Catalonia."

"By definition a historian must be curious; that is what makes us look into the heart of societies. I think that I was surprised by the relative ease with which Spain moved from dictatorship to democracy after the death of Franco. But thinking about the impact of civil wars on societies I have reached the conclusion that the generation that grows up after a civil war has such terrible memories of what happened that it does everything possible to prevent a repetition in the future."

"The younger generation think in terms of the present and the future, and they’ve lost a sense of what happened before their lifetimes. They’ve lost any notion of the complexities of the past, and the fact that statesmen were struggling with similar problems in the 17th century as in the late 20th – threats to the unity of a nation state that was moving towards the form of development that it would reach in the 19th century."

"We have to learn to navigate this globalized world. Instant communication has changed our lives; those crises of the 18th and 19th centuries were not known around the world, but now we know what is going on everywhere at any time. But we are also seeing a world in which the banks and the large multinationals are playing a bigger role than ever in making decisions about how we live. These supranational organizations are pressuring governments, and that is distancing government from the people. People want more control over their lives, which is why we are seeing a resurgence of regionalism, of ethnicity, of nationalism - everybody wants a place in the sun."

"I have always said that it is precisely at moments of economic difficulty when politicians emerge who want to take advantage of widespread discontent to impose their own agenda."

"A leftist is a person who does leftist things, not one who claims to be one. The left is a way of life, not a manner of speech. Someone who likes to talk but not listen, who is not willing to stand up for those who are wronged, including their rivals, is not a leftist in my book. Defending your rival’s rights is the greatest virtue. This is why there is no such thing as a virtuous politician as far as I’m concerned. And if I continue to claim that I am a leftist, it is because I still hope for a more just distribution of wealth and an education system that teaches this virtue."

"Greece and Europe have been intrinsically linked notions since the time of Herodotus. We need to remember that. And we need to learn to live in a European and globalized society without saying “us” and “them.”"

"Speaking as a historian, there has never been an empire that was not multinational."

"When the incompetent are allowed to govern, it is the fault of the able."

"Today, unfortunately, education does not start in the home and school is in no position to fill that void."

"I was always in favor of the term “New Macedonia,” because North Macedonia naturally suggests a South Macedonia and in this case, North Macedonia is a country and the South Macedonia that is implied is a region in another country."

"The French, you know, have a good quality: They don’t tolerate arrogance. I’m the same way. I voted for him, but when I heard him tell an unemployed man asking for a job to “go across the street” and get one, and especially after the cover-up of the Benalla scandal – when Macron’s security officer beat up a protester – he was finished as far as I was concerned."

"Hope is something to comfort the weak."

"Yes, I haven’t changed my mind. For decades, anything that was decided in Europe came with a footnote, an asterisk, added by the British. But we can’t move forward with asterisks; they have to go."

"We have come to the point of believing complacency to be a virtue. Yet complacency is the biggest form of cowardice. The worst thing we can do to our children is to teach them to remain quiet. In ancient Greece, during periods of crisis and division, citizens who would not take a position were fined. We tell our young people to be irresponsible, to stay off the pitch, instead of teaching them that we all need to be on the pitch and to fight. When you deny yourself the right of participation and choice, you’re denying your freedom."

"It is not history’s duty to solve the problems of the future, but simply to remind us of the solutions that were chosen during similar situations. But history that teaches only one solution is a dangerous thing."

"Europe has always been mixed-race, it has never had such a thing as biological purity. The crucial question today is how the migrants and refugees will be assimilated. Unfortunately, we continue making the same huge mistake – in Europe and in Greece. We treat foreign nationals like a separate community that cannot be assimilated. By doing so, we create a foreign territory within our own. The Arabs say that the land of Islam is wherever there is a single Muslim. The people coming to Greece, therefore, need to learn our language and customs, to be assimilated into Greek institutions in a manner that is not just restricted to the islands of the eastern Aegean and the hot spots, but which includes the entire country. We’re afraid of losing our culture by sharing it. But without contact with others, culture ceases being a culture."

"I’m not scared of the far-right: It’s like a growing boil that needs to be lanced and I have a feeling it’s already happening."

"The most beautiful history book of the year is Marking the Hours: English People and their Prayers, 1240–1570... Eamon Duffy examines surviving copies of the Book of Hours, the most intimate book of the late Middle Ages, tracing the marks left by readers — everything from laundry lists scribbled in the margins to personalised versions of prayers. This richly illustrated book takes us back into the hearts and souls of the English long ago."