History
25 February 2008
There are many different ways of looking at history. I have a split experience myself. I love reading factual books on the past - but I write fiction set in the past.
In schools just now, it seems the emphasis is on the experience of the mass of people - less than the geopolitical swings of the pendulums of power and influence. Most 11-year-olds have 'done a project on' dinosaurs, the Romans and the Tudors. Then, most secondary students have 'done' World War II. I believe the most popular syllabus at GCSE is close to what Eric Hobsbawm called 'the short 20th century', from the Russian revolution of 1917 to events around the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The great thing about this approach is that it brings out the process of coincidence and conflict, alliance, betrayal and accidental advance that shapes individual lives. For example, how did it feel to be an 18th or 19th century inhabitant of Lorraine or Sicily, your statehood swapped from prince to king to general. Perhaps they barely knew it was happening if the ambit of their lives was narrow - just from farm or village to town square, perhaps half a day's walking apart.
Preparing this website, Greg and I wrote a set of history pages that lead up to the crucial Sepulchre date of 1891. To do this, we decided we need to look back through a 'long 19th century', all the way to the French Revolution of 1789. From there we scanned - among others - the Terror, the Empire, the Restoration, the Commune and, finally, Prosperity.
When Greg wrote Secrets of the Labyrinth, he took on a longer view again - from around 3500 BCE, when Carcassonne was just a palisade on a hill and Egypt was already a kingdom.
You see, for me, it isn't just a question of finding some way to empathise with the common people, but also the sweep of overwhelming events.
Perhaps it is a little like gazing at the flotsam on a turning tide - aware of the sporadic, lurching movement of fragments of timber, thrown about by the greater forces of gravity and the wet, sloshing momentum of the waves ...
I write about fragments tossed by the tide.
At least, that's how
it looks from the Sepulchre.
