Thread by @fascinatorfun

I remember in my O and A level history lessons the importance to Russia (or the USSR) of warm sea ports in the Black Sea with easy access to the south being drummed into us and why.

And how huge Russia was with great land masses uninhabited.

https://twitter.com/myhistorytales/status/1496842929821732872

We were fortunate in our history teachers and also our English teacher who introduced us to Uncle Vanya, the Cherry Orchard, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, The Government Inspector (by the Russian Ukrainian Gogol) and the Brothers Karamazov

And the teachers talked to one another so the lessons joined up.

And the map was always there.

I thought ( mistakenly) that Crimea would be enough for Russia.

It’s never enough.

So what is the world going to do in concert to break that spring?

When we were studying First WW history we also read Rupert Brooks, Wilfred Owen and Vera Britain’s Testament to Youth.

War was not glamourised.

I realise, now, that being taught Anglo- Irish history was unusual in English schools.

I was luckier than I knew.