Antony Beevor Quotes
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I believe passionately in preemptive pessimism, especially before a book comes out. I expect the worst both from reviewers and sales, and then, with any luck, I may be proved wrong.
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If you smash a city when you're trying to capture it, you actually end up providing the perfect terrain for the defenders while blocking the access for your own armoured vehicles.
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I'm often reassured in a bizarre - perhaps perverse - way when I find in the archive stuff that contradicts what my assumptions have been. That's interesting and exciting.
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To begin impatiently is the worst mistake a writer can make.
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Teaching the history of the British Empire links in with that of the world: for better and for worse, the Empire made us what we are, forming our national identity. A country that does not understand its own history is unlikely to respect that of others.
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Restorers of paintings and pottery follow a code of conduct in their work to distinguish the original material from what they are adding later.
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When I was a child I had something called Perthes' Disease which meant I was on crutches, so I was bullied at school and all that sort of stuff.
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It is this compulsion to look backwards at a time of crisis because one's got no idea of what lies ahead. There is a notion of security that somehow it must resemble the past. It's never going to. Just because we muddled through in the past doesn't mean we can automatically muddle through in the future.
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In my library/study/barn, there is a Ping-Pong table on which I can pile working books and spread maps.
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Alpacas are very endearing, and they all have very different personalities.
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I think it's outrageous if a historian has a 'leading thought' because it means they will select their material according to their thesis.
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Historical truth and the marketing needs of the movie and television industry remain fundamentally incompatible.
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I have come across both inspiring teachers of history and deplorable ones over the years, so one cannot generalise, except perhaps to observe that the profession seems to encourage anti-militarist sentiments.