Amongst the comments on the career of the late Dame Hilary Mantel was Libby Purves's sympathetic message on understanding the past and accepting that some past attitudes were quite different from what is taken for granted today. In a less sympathetic spirit I agree. Historians and good historical story writers like Mantel have much to contribute. But in addition the more we learn to understand the mores of the past, the more chance we have of starting to grasp that more mysterious time, the present.
Purves gives the game away with her almost casual reference to 'Death before Dishonour' as something we would never take seriously today (at least in Western cultures). Yet what really needs to be shouted out from the rooftops is that a change of that kind is no mere whimsy of self-indulged people in rich societies.
The best clue here comes from a study in the more recent past - Max Hastings' Abyss, The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 - who argues that the brief burst of statesmanship and wisdom on the part of J F Kennedy avoided catastrophe. Now Putin is reminding us that our luck in 1962 might not last. No one can say whether he, or his entourage, accept a version of 'Death before Dishonour', but a statement that in the nuclear age there might be no nation left to remember your honour would be timely. Now it's safer to stick to economic growth with Kwasi Keating.
Mantel and Hastings illustrate that when cultural mores change with time, in some cases the forces driving those changes go very deep indeed.