Norma Davies and his playground

How can we find the right background to create an interesting and involving context for the training session? This question bothers many teachers. The issue "god's playground" turned to be extremely interesting and fascinating the group.

Professor  Ivor Norman Richard Davies FBA (born 8 June 1939 to Richard and Elizabeth Davies in Bolton, Lancashire) is a leading British historian of Welsh descent, noted for his publications on the history of Poland, Europe, and the United Kingdom. Davies studied in Grenoble, France (1957–1958). He was a disciple of A. J. P. Taylor at Magdalen College, Oxford where he earned a B.A. (history, with honours) in 1962. He earned an M.A. (1966) at University of Sussex. He studied in Perugia, Italy. He intended to study for a PhD in the Soviet Union, but was denied an entry visa. Instead, he went to Kraków to study at the Jagiellonian University and do research on the Polish–Soviet War. As this war was denied in the official communist Polish historiography of that time he was obliged to change the title of his dissertation to The British Foreign Policy towards Poland, 1919–20. After obtaining a Ph.D. (1968) in Kraków, the English text appeared under the title White Eagle, Red Star. The Polish-Soviet War 1919–20 in 1972.

From 1971, Davies taught Polish history at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) of the University of London, where he was professor from 1985 to 1996. Currently, he is Supernumary Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. Throughout his career, Davies has lectured in many countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, China, Poland, and in most of the rest of Europe as well. Stanford University controversially denied him a tenured faculty position in 1986. In 1996 he retired from the professorial chair he had held in London since 1985.

God's Playground is a book written in 1979 by Norman Davies, covering the history of Poland. Davies was inspired to the title by Jan Kochanowski's 1580s Boże igrzysko (God’s Plaything Man). The book (or two, as many editions are split into two volumes) has received good reviews in international press and is considered by many historians and other scholars to be one of the best English-language books on the subject of history of Poland. The author received several Polish honours.