Neal Ascherson

It was a real revolution. But with one missing feature. That is the feeling in a people that "We have done it…

— Neal Ascherson

History--the product, not the raw material--is a bottle with a label. For many years now, the emphasis of historical discussion has been…

— Neal Ascherson

Who invented political tolerance? The English invented it, it's something which has taken roots with some difficulty in Scottish politics.

— Neal Ascherson

The way that words mutate reminds me of fashions in music. The word--the note--is a constant. But the setting and chord in…

— Neal Ascherson

To be defeated, but not to give in, is victory.

— Neal Ascherson

Well, if there is a spectrum between ethnic and civic forms of nationalism, which is a rather schematic way of looking at…

— Neal Ascherson

Broadly speaking, most people lived their lives in a kind of unwilling conformity. The thing was that they were offered, as time…

— Neal Ascherson

But the people did get it. They had lost something -- not exactly their fear, but their patience. Suddenly it seemed unbearable…

— Neal Ascherson

In Moscow, dim and green under the summer rain, columns of armour were waiting in the side-roads off the long avenue from…

— Neal Ascherson

“To be defeated, but not to give in, is victory. - Jósef Piłsudski”

— Neal Ascherson

I think England has been in the long-term damaged by Britishness.

— Neal Ascherson

When Tony Benn became a minister in the 1960s -- and I think this must be apocryphal -- he had a huge…

— Neal Ascherson

There are many kinds of revelation. But the most powerful is the vision which transcends the mental boundary between life and non-life,…

— Neal Ascherson

The very word "change" has changed. When I was young--and not just because I was young--we looked forward with confident impatience to…

— Neal Ascherson

English stupidity is an organism so primitive that it is apparently impossible to kill off. It reminds me of Physarum Polycephalum, the…

— Neal Ascherson

I'm always interested in debunking myths if they are untrue. But it's also important to identify myths and how they function, what…

— Neal Ascherson

For the past 15 years or so, British governments have tried to persuade the rest of us that the best judges of…

— Neal Ascherson

I am always fascinated when people talk about 'the forging of a nation'. Most nations are forgeries, perpetrated in the last century…

— Neal Ascherson

All human populations are in some sense immigrants. All hostility between different cultures in one place has an aspect of the classic…

— Neal Ascherson

“By the middle twentieth century, few European nation-states had not at one time or another figured themselves as 'the outpost of Western…

— Neal Ascherson

On the Black Sea, my father saw it begin. And on the Black Sea, seventy years on, I saw the beginning of…

— Neal Ascherson

Darwinism did not strip meaning from the world but intensified it, 'by identifying it in as many aspects of life as possible'.

— Neal Ascherson

Who should regulate the media? Who should control the press? The commentariat agonises, as if the choice was between state control through…

— Neal Ascherson

I went into journalism in a grandiose way. I thought maybe I'd do a little journalism whilst I write the great novel…

— Neal Ascherson