The male clerk with his quill pen and copper-plate handwriting had gone for good. The female short-hand typist took his place. It was a decisive moment in women's emancipation.

Manchester has everything but good looks..., the only place in England which escapes our characteristic vice of snobbery.

Psychoanalysts believe that the only "normal" people are those who cause not trouble to either themselves or anyone else.

Perfect soldier, perfect gentleman never gave offence to anyone not even the enemy.

History is the great propagator of doubt.

History gets thicker as it approaches recent times: more people, more events, and more books written about them. More evidence is preserved, often, one is tempted to say, too much. Decay and destruction have hardly begun their beneficent work.

Bismarck fought 'necessary' wars and killed thousands, the idealists of the twentieth century fight 'just' wars and kill millions.