0:00:00 > 0:00:04Of course, expect much more on that into the evening and tomorrow.
0:00:04 > 0:00:08That's this edition of Outside Source, next on the BBC News
0:00:08 > 0:00:13Channel, it is Meet The Author.
0:00:13 > 0:00:15This week on Meet the Author Jim Naughtie talks
0:00:15 > 0:00:18with the writer and historian Norman Davies about his new book
0:00:18 > 0:00:20Beneath Another Sky: A Global Journey into History.
0:00:20 > 0:00:26He circumnavigates the globe to explore in some remotest places,
0:00:26 > 0:00:35stories of settlement and migration, driven by the primeval urge to "get
0:00:35 > 0:00:44up and go." Welcome.
0:00:47 > 0:00:51Thing to think that we all have an urge to get up and go, it's quite
0:00:51 > 0:01:01another thing to do it. You are no young man. You set off and you
0:01:01 > 0:01:05sunshining up navigated the globe to all kinds of places that you must
0:01:05 > 0:01:14never have imagined that you would get to. What drove you on?After a
0:01:14 > 0:01:20certain age, I received an invitation to Australia but I don't
0:01:20 > 0:01:25like long flights so I decided to go by easy stages and take my time. And
0:01:25 > 0:01:30then I realised why go back the same way, just keep going, it took
0:01:30 > 0:01:34several months but it was a tremendous idea at my age!And the
0:01:34 > 0:01:39story you have followed, really, is the story of human movement, of
0:01:39 > 0:01:46migration, which of course is a very contemporary problem, obsession but
0:01:46 > 0:01:52it is one that you see as fundamental and to explaining, how
0:01:52 > 0:01:58the world has come to be the way that it is?Absolutely. Human beings
0:01:58 > 0:02:03have been migrating, they've been on the move ever since they emerged
0:02:03 > 0:02:10whatever it was, 2 million years ago. Moving from place toe place,
0:02:10 > 0:02:19eventually from continent to continent and their various
0:02:19 > 0:02:23movements, collisions, interactions, conquests, co abtearingses have
0:02:23 > 0:02:29created the world as we know it, without that, human history would be
0:02:29 > 0:02:32completely different. Your focus has tended to be European
0:02:32 > 0:02:39in the past. You have written a lot about the Slavic portion of Europe
0:02:39 > 0:02:44and also written on the islands, and these islands which we sit. How did
0:02:44 > 0:02:52your perspective change when you began to visit some of these, what
0:02:52 > 0:02:56Europeans would called, remote outposts?Well my choices are to go
0:02:56 > 0:03:01to places I had never been before and didn't know much about. The idea
0:03:01 > 0:03:05was more about learning and extending what I already knew.
0:03:05 > 0:03:10It was a voyage of discovery? Exactly.
0:03:10 > 0:03:18Sometimes I went to places which, their history coincided, you go to
0:03:18 > 0:03:24Baku, it used to be a part of the Russian empire but many of the
0:03:24 > 0:03:27places were completely foreign to me, so all the more interesting for
0:03:27 > 0:03:33that. It's a fascinating catalogue. All of
0:03:33 > 0:03:39little known places of the world, what was the first point at which
0:03:39 > 0:03:43you felt on this journey, you were really on to something here, you
0:03:43 > 0:03:47didn't know the story of this place and it's telling you something you
0:03:47 > 0:03:52had never thought of before?I had that feeling very often indeed. Of
0:03:52 > 0:03:59course I could communicate better in some places than others. I went to
0:03:59 > 0:04:05Mauritius, an outpost if ever there was one but found a speak, a French
0:04:05 > 0:04:09Creole but found a speaker, which was interesting, that I could speak
0:04:09 > 0:04:15to people, learn and read books and so on but less son when you go to
0:04:15 > 0:04:21Malaysia. You were inevitably the outsider?
0:04:21 > 0:04:27Every-I was but I did, still get under the skin, often. I went to
0:04:27 > 0:04:32Texas and wrote an essay about the very first American settlers in
0:04:32 > 0:04:39Texas and lo and behold, I was able to spend a day with the descendent
0:04:39 > 0:04:47of one of the 300, the first group of American settlers in Texas. So I
0:04:47 > 0:04:52was an outer but still I tried to communicate with people at much as
0:04:52 > 0:04:57possible. I spent 40 years writing about a tiny corner of the world.
0:04:57 > 0:05:04Now you've got to see, to get a taste of the rest of it, and the
0:05:04 > 0:05:10rest, it is, of course, enormous. So you can't become an expert on these
0:05:10 > 0:05:16places but you get a feel of how things developed, where people's
0:05:16 > 0:05:20came from, what are the relations between the different continents
0:05:20 > 0:05:24that I went to. You have split your life for a long
0:05:24 > 0:05:29time between this country and Poland, coming back to Europe,
0:05:29 > 0:05:33having undertaken this journey and having processed the thoughts that
0:05:33 > 0:05:39make up this book, has your view of Europe changed?Inevitably, Europe
0:05:39 > 0:05:44now for me is a much smaller place. I used to think it was almost all
0:05:44 > 0:05:56the world. Now I see that Europe is a small particular, of a very much
0:05:56 > 0:06:01bigger Continent. Of course, no-one will ever get to understand all of
0:06:01 > 0:06:06the complications but at least while you can still think reasonably
0:06:06 > 0:06:11clearliy, you need to get a sense of the size of the globe and the
0:06:11 > 0:06:13complexities of human history and so on.
0:06:13 > 0:06:18When you are talking about migration as such an important component of
0:06:18 > 0:06:23human history, it puts into perspective the panic and the
0:06:23 > 0:06:29political difficulty that we go to cross Europe at the moment, because
0:06:29 > 0:06:36of migration, there's a consequence of water shortages in Africa and war
0:06:36 > 0:06:41in the Middle East. It does tend to say look, there is more under the
0:06:41 > 0:06:52sun?Absolutely. You begin to see yourself looking like you are
0:06:52 > 0:06:59watching the Romans coming over the rise in the 4th, 5th century. Most
0:06:59 > 0:07:04of historical change is not smooth. It happens with leaps and bounds and
0:07:04 > 0:07:08intervals between. But we are living through a phase where humanity is on
0:07:08 > 0:07:15the march. Our little hard continent is the
0:07:15 > 0:07:18target destination for many of them at the moment.
0:07:18 > 0:07:24You've been writing history for half a century now, more or less, this is
0:07:24 > 0:07:29an extraordinary work to have come up with in the sense that the sheer
0:07:29 > 0:07:33volume of work that is involved putting this together in unknown
0:07:33 > 0:07:40places, you know, dealing with cultures of which you yourself say
0:07:40 > 0:07:45you knew very little, wanting to get it right, bringing an academic focus
0:07:45 > 0:07:51to, what a thing to take on?Well I've done that before. I don't know
0:07:51 > 0:07:56where I will do it again. It's just what you do?Of course,
0:07:56 > 0:08:01and it is a learning exercise, preventing ourselves going stale by
0:08:01 > 0:08:04write being the same things all the time, which is what some historians
0:08:04 > 0:08:08do. You end the introduction by quoting
0:08:08 > 0:08:16tenson from. Lysses, seeking a new world. That is what you are doing
0:08:16 > 0:08:22here?I realise I was in the category of ageing Ulysses who
0:08:22 > 0:08:29wanted to set sail one more time. Yes, that was, whether I will ever
0:08:29 > 0:08:34have another voyage, I will never know.But you're glad you did?Oh,
0:08:34 > 0:08:38absolutely. I'm still amazed that I was able to do it and got to the
0:08:38 > 0:08:44last page.Norman Davies, author of Beneath Another Sky, thank you very
0:08:44 > 0:08:45much. Thank you