We need a war every 10 years, so we can stay match fit in case the Germans try again.

False history gets made all day, any day,

war with poison and chemicals was not so rare in the ancient world ... An astounding panoply of toxic substances, venomous creatures, poison plants, animals and insects, deleterious environments, virulent pathogens, infectious agents, noxious gases, and combustible chemicals were marshalled to defeat foes - and panoply is an apt term here, because it is the ancient Greek word for 'all weapons.

We study history in order to intervene in the course of history.

What interests us about the past is at least partly a function of what bothers us or makes us curious in the present.

A land without ruins is a land without memories - a land without memories is a land without history.

Pearl Harbor is strenuously respectful of contemporary sensitivities, sometimes at the cost of accuracy.

History is a great deal closer to poetry than is generally realised: in truth, I think, it is in essence the same.

Bound as our lives are to the tyranny of time, it is through what we know of history that we are delivered from our bonds and escape - into time.

It's a great historical joke that when the Spanish met the Aztecs, it was a blind date made in serve-you-right heaven. At the time, they were the two most unpleasant cultures in the entire world, and richly deserved each other. Still, the story of how stout Cortes blustered, bullied and bludgeoned his way to collapsing an entire empire with a handful of contagious hoodlums is astonishing.