The duty of a historian is simply to understand and then convey that understanding, no more than that.

The great help of being in the Army is to understand why are the armies clever in what they describe as emotional intelligence, making soldiers come to terms with the death of comrades by certain rituals.

School-leavers unfortunately will come away thinking the First World War consisted simply of 'going over the top' on the Western Front to slaughter in no-man's-land, when the conflict extended so much further, to the collapse of four empires and numerous civil wars.

The temptation in any approaching crisis or conflict is, because people haven't got a clue what lies ahead, they're always searching into the past for some sort of pattern ... to galvanise the nation or their supporters and put themselves on a pedestal to sound Churchillian or Rooseveltian.

I will always put family first. Every time I haven't, I have regretted it and apologised.

It's very important for females to feel empowered. It took me a long time to find that inside me.

He's been doing this a long time. Hats off to a champion, Carlos Condit.

My generation produced some terrific writers from all over, and the great thing about it is that they were all mixed in race.