“It was written in London under the advancing shadow of the Second World War, and it may be that the apprehensionsof those years can be felt vibrating from time to time in its pages. The historian,concerned as he is with the most vital of all studies, is often more subject than herealizes to the electric currents of contemporary mood.”

“So, then, the best of the historian is subject to the poet; for whatsoever action or faction, whatsoever counsel, policy, or war-stratagem the historian is bound to recite, that may the poet, if he list, with his imitation make his own, beautifying it both for further teaching and more delighting, as it pleaseth him; having all, from Dante’s Heaven to his Hell, under the authority of his pen.”

“with the centenary of 1914 rapidly approaching it is high time to stop regarding the first world war as current affairs and douglas haig as our contemporary”

“It has often been observed, that those who have the most time at their disposal profit by it the least. A single hour a day, steadily given to the study of some interesting subject, brings unexpected accumulations of knowledge.”

“The electricity came on for the second time today wile we were eating.This may be a fool's paradise, but it's a paradise nonetheless.”

“But the tale or narrative set in the past may have its particular time-free value; and the candid reader will not misunderstand me, will not suppose that I intend any preposterous comparison, when I observe that Homer was farther removed in time from Troy than I am from the Napoleonic wars; yet he spoke to the Greeks for 2,000 years and more.”