You really struggle to be a successful empire if you are also the world's biggest debtor.

I would say I'm a 19th-century liberal, possibly even an 18th-century one.

The West may collapse very suddenly. Complex civilizations do that, because they operate, most of the time, on the edge of chaos.

The British press has an insatiable appetite for making public things that should be private. It's a prurience that I've never understood.

Oral history is a recipe for complete misrepresentation because almost no one tells the truth, even when they intend to.

The rise of the West is, quite simply, the pre-eminent historical phenomenon of the second half of the second millennium after Christ.

If young men have jobs - or the prospects of jobs - they are less likely to take up arms, they are less likely to join the resistance.