Margaret MacMillan

“In the 19th century, we didn't much like the loud annexationist voices south of the border or American support for Sinn Fein adventurers who thought, by seizing the Canadian colonies, they could force Britain out of Ireland.”

“I've always loved reading diaries and memoirs and just getting a sense of different personalities and what made them tick as individuals.”

“The 1898 annexation of the Hawaiian Islands merely formally recognized what had long been American domination.”

“By the start of August 1914, it was dawning on the British that a major war was about to break out on mainland Europe. Public opinion and, crucially, the cabinet was deeply divided on whether to intervene or stay out.”

“Are artists the canaries in the mine, warning of the coming explosion before anyone else? It's hard to look at the world before 1914 and not wonder if they somehow felt a catastrophe was bearing down on them and their societies.”

“How curious that such an outsize man, in physique as well as personality, should be remembered today mainly for giving his name to a small fish. For the 19th century, Bismarck was no herring but a leviathan. Between 1862 and 1890, he created Germany, seeing off first the Austrian empire and then France.”

“The Great War was nobody's fault - or everybody's.”

“There was that argument that if we had more women in positions of authority, the world would be a nicer place. And then we got Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Indira Gandhi. When women become acclimatised to war, they can become every bit as ruthless as men.”

“History is about great forces, yes, but also about contingency.”

“I do tend to look at individuals and whether they do or do not matter in history.”

“The range of weapons at the disposal of military powers is terrifying in its capacity to damage the world and its inhabitants, perhaps even to bring humanity's long story to its end.”

“As a Canadian, I've always approached international history as an outsider, neither attacking nor defending key decisions - those were made by actors who are also major figures within national historical traditions for American and British scholars.”

“For many human beings, an interest in the past starts with themselves. That is, in part, a result of biology. Like other creatures, humans have a beginning and an ending, and in between lies their story.”

“Women are so much a part of war, even if they tend to see another side of it. To say they don't understand war is ridiculous.”

“American diplomats worked closely with the League of Nations. The United States used its considerable influence to settle some of the outstanding issues left over from World War I, and Washington took the lead in negotiating naval limitations in the Pacific.”

“Many in the English-speaking world came to agree with the Germans that the Treaty of Versailles, and the reparations in particular, were unjust, and that Lloyd George had capitulated to the vengeful French.”

“The only person, if you're a religious person, who's always right is God. And if you make the mistake of thinking that you, like God, are always right, and that you, like God, always know everything, then it seems to me you're riding for a fall.”

“I'm not sure I'm going to say that women and men are exactly the same. I think we may have different ways of approaching things, different sensitivities, and women are often better than men at picking up emotional cues.”

“The passion for the past is clearly about more than market forces or government policies. History responds to a variety of needs, from greater understanding of ourselves and our world to answers about what to do.”

“The Canadian government has had a field day apologising for past policies towards a series of ethnic groups: Italian, Ukrainian, Sikh, Chinese, Japanese and Jews.”