I'm a passionate monarchist.

In the course of the war, 168,000 Soviet citizens were formally sentenced to death and executed for alleged cowardice or desertion;.

Amoz Oz, who said something of the same kind, but from a different perspective: ‘People like you’, he said to me, ’are going to become very disappointed in Israel in the years ahead. You want it to behave like a European society. Instead, it is becoming a Middle Eastern society. I hope that it will not behave worse than other Middle Eastern societies. But you should not delude yourself that it is likely to behave much better.

The French were more tolerant of brothels than any other nation in Europe, though there was some dispute about whether this reflected enlightenment or depravity.

At Arnhem, the British fielded too many gentlemen and not enough players.

Courage is essentially competitive and imitative.

Yet since 1917 the Soviet Union had created an edifice of self-deceit unrivalled in human history.

Never in history have lies been such vital instruments of diplomacy and policy.

Here was a manifestation of a huge, historic British folly, repeated over many centuries including the twenty-first: the adoption of gesture strategy, committing small forces as an earnest of good intentions, heedless of their gross inadequacy for the military purpose at hand.

All men who participate in wars find themselves obliged to do things which, if they are decent people, they afterwards regret.