Philip Ziegler > Quotes

“Fourteenth-century men seemed to have regarded their doctor in rather the same way as the twentieth-century men are apt to regard their priest, with tolerance for someone who was doing his best and the respect due to a man of learning but also with a nagging and uncomfortable conviction that he was largely irrelevant to the real and urgent problems of their lives.”
― Philip Ziegler, The Black Death

“But unfortunately I am neither artist, millionaire, architect, poet, musician or even God, but only a rather sentimental, shy young man with ambitions beyond my energy and dreams beyond my income. So shall I send you a small box of chocolates, or would you rather have a postal order?”
― Philip Ziegler, Diana Cooper: The Biography of Lady Diana Cooper

“France was the next country to be overrun. The plague arrived at Marseilles a month or two after it reached the mainland of Italy. Through 1348, it moved across the country, advancing on two main lines, toward Bordeaux in the west and Paris in the north. The fate of Perpignan, just north of the Spanish border, illustrates vividly what happened in many of the smaller cities. The disruption of everyday commercial life is shown by statistics of loans made by the Jews of Perpignan to their Christian co-citizens. In January 1348, there were sixteen such loans, in February, twenty-five, in March, thirty-two. There were eight in the first eleven days of April, three in the rest of the month, and then no more until August 12.”
― Philip Ziegler, The Black Death

“Bad drove out bad, and to imbibe foul odors was a useful protection. According to another contemporary writer, John Colle: “Attendants who take care of latrines are nearly all to be considered immune.” It was not unknown for apprehensive citizens to spend hours each day crouched over a latrine absorbing the fetid smells.”
― Philip Ziegler, The Black Death

“No-one would claim that, for its part, Ulysses was widely read or easily understood. By any standards it demands patience and unwavering concentration. But in the current of twentieth century literature it stands like a great rock which cannot easily be passed by. To ask whether Joyce was a greater writer than Faulkner, Hemingway or E.M. Forster is a fatuous question, as pointless as asking whether Jane Austen was a greater writer than Charlotte Bronte or Flaubert than Stendhal. What is certain is that he cannot be ignored. Ulysses was a landmark. It influenced the course of serious fiction writing as no other novel of the twentieth century. It can be criticised, challenged, disliked, but like its author it cannot be ignored.”
― Philip Ziegler, Between the Wars: 1919-1939