![]() The historian, Toynbee said, must necessarily select what is significant and what is not. Get briefed on the story of the week, and developing stories to watch across the Asia-Pacific. Every historian, he explained, “is situated in a point-moment of time, and he can only observe the universe from this shifting point-moment in his very brief life.” Urban and Toynbee agreed that historians bring to their studies their own prejudices and biases. Toynbee acknowledged that all historians’ views of history are shaped by their life experiences as well as their research. The first part of the dialogue dealt with Toynbee’s approaches to the study of history. Urban had familiarized himself with Toynbee’s magisterial A Study of History and his lesser works. The Toynbee-Urban dialogue consisted of twelve radio discussions in 19 that were published in 1974 under the title Toynbee on Toynbee. More than two years later, Toynbee sat down with George Urban, the Hungarian writer who moved to England in 1948, wrote for Encounter magazine, and worked for the BBC and Radio Free Europe. ![]() ![]() A few weeks ago, I wrote in these pages about the fascinating 1970 dialogue between Arnold Toynbee and Japanese professor Kei Wakaizumi, which was later edited and published in book form as Surviving the Future. ![]()
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