What Isn't History?
Selected Articles and Speeches on Writing History and Historical Fiction
Published on 12. February 2019
163 pages
978-0-7953-5053-5 (ISBN)
Description
An award-winning historian's guide to writing about history, in both fiction and nonfiction.
Is history absolute? Is writing about the past an exact science, or is it more of a nebulous discipline open to different interpretations and points of view? These are important questions that noted historian Ian Mortimer says all serious writers of history must reflect on.
This new collection explores those ideas, providing an analysis on how the immensity of chronicling the past lends itself to a wide variety of audiences and contexts. Mortimer teaches that the purpose of history goes beyond simply relaying events of yesterday-it is about finding the meaning and conveying it to living and future generations. It is up to the audience to determine what history means to them, and it is up to the historian-or historical fiction writer-to determine what is and what isn't history.
What Isn't History? collects together for the first time the selected articles and speeches on writing history and historical fiction from Ian Mortimer, the bestselling author of Edward III: The Perfect King, The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England, and other popular titles, acclaimed as "the most remarkable medieval historian of our time" (The Times, London).
More details
Person
Ian Mortimer is a British historian and historical fiction author. He holds a PhD from the University of Exeter and a Master's degree from the University of London, and is currently a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He is the author of the Sunday Times best-selling book A Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan London, as well as detailed biographies of Roger Mortimer, First Earl of March, Edward III, Henry IV, and Henry V. He is well known for developing and promoting the theory that Edward II did not meet his end in Berkeley Castle in 1327, as is held by conventional theory. His historical fiction novel, the first book in the Clarenceux Trilogy, was published under the alias of James Forrester.
Content
- Intro
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1. Originality in History
- 2. The Paris Catacombs
- 3. What Isnâ?Tt History?
- 4. The Historian as Virtual Time Traveller
- 5. History in Education
- 6. Breaking the Evidence Barrier
- 7. Wikipedia and the Ship of Fools
- 8. The Art of History
- 9. Historical Novelists Should Not Be Ashamed of Telling Lies
- 10. Why Historians Should Write Fiction
- 11. Creative Non-Fiction
- 12. Twelve Hints for Writing History for the General Public
- 13. The Importance of Archives
- 14. The Problems of Visiting the Past in Fact and Fiction
- Acknowledgements
- Other works by Ian Mortimer
- Endnotes
