Jamie thought for a moment. “Couldn’t we all say that about ourselves? As nations, too? ‘We shouldn’t have done what we did.’ Isn’t that what we all now feel about our past?”

“You mean Britain shouldn’t have done what it did? Or America? Or Spain?”

“Yes,” said Jamie. “But not just them. Not just the obvious targets. Pretty much everybody. Russia. Turkey. China. The past is pretty shameful once you start to look at it more closely.”

The Sweet Remnants of Summer, by Alexander McCall Smith, p. 8