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I think the tradition of well-written history hasn't been squashed out of the academic world as much in Britain as it has in the United States.

When you tell people you're in history, they give you this pained expression because that was the course they hated in high school. But history can be exciting, intellectually rigorous, and fun.

This recognition of the earlier human background, now so obvious to us, did not come all at once, for the inclusion of history itself in university instruction is an event less than two centuries old.

I do belong to the club which doesn't see a distinction between academic history and popular history.

As a former English major, I have always been fascinated by the connections between literature and history.

The way you 'take history' is also a way of 'making history.'

I've got a history in my life of difficult times.

It sometimes seems to me that the whole course of English history was one of accident, confusion, chance and unintended consequences - there's no real pattern.

In the India I was growing up in, history wasn't really a wise career option. People would joke and say, 'History's okay, but what's your actual job?' I didn't come from a privileged background and couldn't afford to be irresponsible, so I did the pragmatic thing and did a MBA.

History should not be left to the historians. Rather, be like Churchill. Make history, and then write it.