The Uses And Abuses Of History, By Margaret Macmillan

"Handle history with care," advises this eminent Canadian practionerin a swift and bracing study of the politics of memory that has no choice but to focus on the misuse of the past. Macmillan does cite a few examples of history as innocent comfort and consolation, from our love of DIY genealogy to the passing of the First World War veterans.

But the meat of her argument shows how every toxic brand of nationalism or warlike aggression on earth has enlisted a distorted vision of the past to serve its present ends. The "battleground" of historical dispute has all too often prepared the terrain for real bloodshed – or sanitised it later. Even on those occasions when societies embrace historical reality rather than self-justifying myths, the effect can be calamitous.