"I am not a historian my training. My academic background is in English literature so I come to history with a particular interest in the shaping power of language. Style matters a lot to me. Almost all my ‘heroes’ are from literature rather than history – a particular school of British twentieth century travel writing, which is now probably starting to look a little romantic has been hugely important to me – in both style and in wanting to bring a sense of place to the history I write. People like Patrick Leigh-Fermor, Jan Morris, Lawrence Durrell. I’m also a keen reader of world poetry – mostly in translation. The Greeks, George Seferis and Constantine Cavafy, I particularly like. I’m a creature of a deeply word curious culture."

"It is a war of ideologies and struggle races. On one side stands National Socialism: ideology, founded on the values of our Germanic, Nordic blood. It is worth the world as we want to see: beautiful, …"

"You can live your life two ways: You can use your language to manipulate. You can use it as a tool to get what you want. But the problem with that is that it assumes you know what you want, and that y…"

"During the 1980s, widespread dissatisfaction with America’s schools gave rise to a powerful movement for educational change, and the nation’s political institutions responded with aggressive reforms. …"

"For tonight, as so many nights before, young Americans struggle and young Americans die in a distant land. Tonight, as so many nights before, the American Nation is asked to sacrifice the blood of its…"