L.P. Hartley's novel The Go-Between begins with one of the most famous first lines in modern literature: "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." The quote has certainly outlived Hartley; it's invoked constantly by anyone trying to make a point about "presentism" and the tendency to judge historical motivations and events by current standards or morality. It even got referenced (and subverted) in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The quote paraphrased some lines delivered by Hartley's old school friend Lord David Cecil in a lecture he delivered at Oxford in 1949. It was...