Can fiction help us understand and reinterpret history?
Absolutely! History is not everybodys cup of tea. But if you read the newspapers, everything has happened before and again before that. It would be great if more politicians read history. To elaborate, , a biographical novel uses fiction to arrive at a much better understanding of character and motive.. For example, The Peace of Versailles is a fact. But what lies behind it? What were the thoughts in the minds behind that Treaty? In a biographical novel we learn about the formative experience in the personal lives of historical figures, of their character traits and thus their motivations. How many important events in history may be traced back to some apparently trivial occurrence in the life of a key player? The phrase Lessons have to be learnt is often misused, as we seem not to learn anything at all. History repeats itself, and it can quite often be a very sad perception to recognise patterns in the behaviour of politicians and governments. We can certainly learn from the past, but
