Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced
Human behavior is timeless.
The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.
No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.
To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
The story and study of the past, both recent and distant, will not reveal the future, but it flashes beacon lights along the way and it is a useful nostrum against despair.