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“If the past is replayed too fast, life seems futile, and humanity resembles water flowing from a tap, straight down the drain. A film of history for today needs to be in slow motion, showing every person who has ever lived as a star, though dimly visible in a night sky, a mystery still unexplored. The focus would move into close-up to reveal the amount of fear there is in the eyes of each one, and how much of the world each can confront without terror. They each cast their light on as much space as they feel at home in, revealing the real limits of their personal, private civilisation. In such a setting, what they have in common depends less on when or where they were born than on the attitude they have towards their fellow beings. You belong with those people with whom you can sympathise, in whatever century they lived, in no matter what civilisation. Such a film would create its surprises by placing side by side people who thought they were strangers, but were not.”

(from An Intimate History of Humanity by Theodore Zeldin, Vintage 1998, p.48)