As we drive back to Velingrad I ponder echoes of this clash of historical narratives in some of the English language guidebooks in which the diction is notably nationalist—(in a populist sense)—there is talk of ‘Turkish enslavers’, ‘dark and obscure times’, ‘the dark years of Ottoman rule’, ‘the Ottoman yoke’, ‘forced mass conversions’ to the Moslem faith and so on. While there is always at least a certain degree of truth in such statements, it is dogmatism that paints five hundred years of history with such a sweeping brush.

Almost all assertions of this nature have been relativised by serious historical research carried out (or rediscovered) in the last twenty years; though I wonder what effect it has on the mental set and self-image of a people who really do regard a period of 500 years of their history—from the Middle Ages on up to the Enlightenment and into the industrial revolution—as one of unrelenting oppression, failed uprisings and bloody reprisals.