“It is a great honour and a mark of prestige for me,” Prof. Davies said, adding: “I have Toruń in my blood as my first visit here was 46 years ago.”
Davies also remarked that his academic work for many years focused on Polish history, which he said was, and continues to be, little known in the world.
Asked by reporters if Poles are able to draw conclusions from history, Davies said: “There is not a single nation who knows how to draw the right conclusions from its history.”
Born in 1939 in Bolton, Lancashire, in the northwest of England, Davies studied at Magdalen College, Oxford and the University of Sussex as well as in Grenoble, Perugia and Poland’s Kraków, where he obtained a doctorate at the Jagiellonian University in 1973.
It was in Kraków that he met his Polish wife.
He was a professor at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College in London for many years. After an early retirement, he devoted himself to writing books.
Most of his studies are on Polish history. His best known books are God’s Playground: A History of Poland; White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War 1919-1920; Rising 44: The Battle for Warsaw; Red Winds from the North; and Europe at War 1939-1945: No Simple Victory.
One of Davies’ books, Microcosm: Portrait of a Central European City, which he wrote together with Roger Moorhouse, deals with the history of the southwestern Polish city of Wrocław.
In 2012, Davies received the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest state distinction.
He has previously received honorary doctorates from Polish universities in Warsaw, Kraków, Gdańsk and Lublin.
Davies holds dual British and Polish citizenship.
(mk/gs)