Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out

Village cricket spread fast through the land. In those days before it became scientific, cricket was the best game in the world to watch, with its rapid sequence of amusing incidents, each ball a potential crisis!

The chorus-ending from Aristophanes, raised every night from every ditch that drains into the Mediterranean, hoarse and primeval as the raven's croak, is one of the grandest tunes to walk by. Or on a night in May, one can walk through the too rare Italian forests for an hour on end and never be out of hearing of the nightingale's song.

Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out

A little man often cast a long shadow.

There is no orthodoxy in walking. It is a land of many paths and no-paths, where every one goes his own and is right.

Every true history must force us to remember that the past was once as real as the present and as uncertain as the future.