I Spend A Lot Of My Time

My First Career Ambitions Involved Turning Into A Boy; I Intended To Be Either A Railway Guard Or A Knight Errant.

When People Begin To Talk About "our Island Story" My Hackles Rise. It Is Deluded And Conservative.

For Me, It Is About Using Everything That Is There And Using The Gaps In The Record, Figuring Out Why The Gaps Might Be There. And Then When You Move On To The Level Of What Historians Said, Laying The Interpretations Side By Side. You Also Have To Look Back At The Documents And Make Your Own Judgments. What The Record Says And What People Say About It. A Novelist Can Fill The Gaps In A Way That A Biographer Cannot.

Hindsight Is The Historian's Necessary Vice.

My Concern Is Less The Monarchy As Such Than The Attempt Of A Fading Colonial Power To Hang Onto Grandeur.