For people familiar with Eastern Europe, Marci Shore’s ‘The Taste of Ashes’ is, in spite of its subject matter, delicious. A professor at Yale with much experience in Eastern Europe, she writes with great sureness of touch, weaving personal recollections with intellectual commentary and ideas with emotions, including her own. Norman Davies Read Quote
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. Norman Davies Read Quote
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. Norman Davies Read Quote
The one certainly for anyone in the path of an avalanche is this: standing still is not an option. Norman Davies Read Quote
Capacity of human societies both to absorb and to discard cultures is much underestimated. Norman Davies Read Quote
Transience is one of the fundamental characteristics both of the human condition and of the political order. Norman Davies Read Quote
There is history in condoms, there is history in lampshades, there is history in everything. Norman Davies Read Quote
I first came across the Anders Army story by accident. When I first went to live in Oxford in the 1960s, I discovered that some of my close neighbours had been on the Anders trail. Norman Davies Read Quote
