Alistair Horne Quotes

Alistair Horne

Profession : Historian

Birth : November 9, 1925

Though not the longest battle in history - that was Verdun - Stalingrad was certainly the most pitiless, an adjective that reappears regularly in Mr. Beevor's classic work.

Alistair Horne

After 1945, shamefully, we Brits seemed dedicated to punishing the heroic Poles at every turn for their wartime loyalty.

Alistair Horne

I greatly blame Congress, spurred on by its personal hatred of Nixon, for passing legislation in June through August of '73 which embargoed any further U.S. help to South Vietnam.

Alistair Horne

History never repeats, but there are the obvious precedents that pessimists can reach for: Sarajevo, 1914; the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, 1938. But equally relevant might be the tragically meaningless guarantees Britain extended to Poland in 1939.

Alistair Horne

Mikheil Saakashvili can claim that 80 per cent of Georgians wanted to join NATO; on the other hand, a similar percentage of Russians would almost certainly support Putin's quest for a strong Russia. We would mistake this mood at our peril.

Alistair Horne

Following 9/11, intelligence indicated numerous links between al-Qa'eda and Algeria. It began to look as though the roots of jihad could be traced back to the war in Algeria that began 50 years ago.

Alistair Horne

Without Kissinger's work in the Middle East, with Sadat especially, I doubt if the Camp David Agreements five years later would have happened. His achievements over detente, the seeds of trust he sowed in a very distrustful and hostile Moscow, helped over a long period.

Alistair Horne

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, Reagan and Thatcher displayed Churchillian magnanimity towards Gorbachev's broken nation. Relations were never better. There was no triumphalism.

Alistair Horne

In the fall of 1973, Erica Jong assaulted the last surviving bastions of old-fashioned modesty with her 'Fear of Flying.'

Alistair Horne