We must admit that history is enjoyable to a large extent because it enables us to pass judgment on the past.

If Margaret Thatcher had been Prime Minister at the time, there would have been no Treaty of Maastricht.

History provides no precise guidelines.

But Germany will always suffer, I fear, from the intensely dramatic character of the crimes of the Third Reich.

A genuinely democratic Iraq might well act as a fresh spur.

It is normal for politicians in all countries to profess themselves the pupils of history, anxious to draw the right lessons from her teaching.

Men like Hitler and Stalin and their immediate lieutenants cannot plead in defence of their actions that these were justified by the accepted values of that time.