When the venture has been made of dealing with historical events and characters, it always seems fair towards the reader to avow what liberties have been taken, and how much of the sketch is founded on history.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
History is full of really good stories. That's the main reason I got into this racket: I want to make the argument that history is interesting.
We've all faced the charge that our novels are history lite, and to some extent, that's true. Yet for some, historical fiction is a way into reading history proper.
Writing historical novels can be dangerous. We need to be as accurate and as fair about the historical record as we can be, at the same time as creating our fictional characters and, hopefully, telling a good story. The challenge is weaving the fiction into the history.
What's most explosive about historical fiction is to use the fictional elements to pressure the history to new insights.
It is the creator of fiction's point of view; it is the character who interests him. Sometimes he wants to convince the reader that the story he is telling is as interesting as universal history.
It may seem unfashionable to say so, but historians should seize the imagination as well as the intellect. History is, in a sense, a story, a narrative of adventure and of vision, of character and of incident. It is also a portrait of the great general drama of the human spirit.
I've always been drawn to historical fiction.
The power of historical fiction for bad and for good can be immense in shaping consciousness of the past.
There is an odd sense of responsibility attached to appearing in a drama about a real piece of history. A work of fiction is fun.
The one thing I would like more credit for is being part of a movement which involves recognising the importance of plot and asserting that books of literary worth could be written that had plots.