If people don't read, that's their choice; a lifelong book habit may itself be some sort of affliction.

Equally, we require a collective past - hence the endless reinterpretations of history, frequently to suit the perceptions of the present.

History unravels; circumstances, following their natural inclination, prefer to remain ravelled.

I didn't think I had anything particular to say, but I thought I might have something to say to children.

I'm not an historian and I'm not wanting to write about how I perceive the social change over the century as a historian, but as somebody who's walked through it and whose life has been dictated by it too, as all our lives are.

Born in Jerusalem, Wadie Said went from being a dragoman to a salesman in the United States and thence to a hugely successful businessman in Egypt.

The idea that memory is linear is nonsense. What we have in our heads is a collection of frames. As to time itself-can it be linear when all these snatches of other presents exist at once in your mind? A very elusive and tricky concept, time.