Dominion

Whenever a party tells you national identity matters more than anything else in politics, that nationalism can sort out all the other problems, then watch out, because you’re on a road that can end with fascism.

We used to think British people could never become Fascists, or Fascist collaborators. But they can. I suppose anybody can, given the right set of circumstances.

The lives God gives to us, the awful things we can’t escape from. Sometimes I think that sort of God would enjoy making hell for us after we die.

I suppose we were drawn to each other because neither of us quite fitted in.

David saw Frank’s eyes, as still and unseeing as Charlie’s had been that terrible day,

If the struggle in the East had continued with Russia fighting Hitler alone, the war would have gone on for years and the slaughter would have been infinitely greater yet.

It was a beautiful October, sunny mellow days succeeding each other, yellow leaves falling gently from the trees.

For me they weren’t just names. I look over the desks and think, this boy sat here, that one there. I pray to the Good Lord another war never comes.

But you were wrong; given the right circumstances fascism can infest any country, feeding off the hatreds and nationalisms that already exist. Nobody is safe.’ ‘I know.

that the Great War had made mass slaughter ordinary, that was why Stalin and Hitler could commit murder on a scale inconceivable before 1914. It was why these old men could talk like Soviet Commissars or SS men.