Have I said somewhere that I'm interested in history? Have I said that I'm sometimes pretty much obsessed by history?
I'm quite sure I have, but I'm going to talk about it again anyway.
All my novels are inspired by some element of history, or incorporate something that reflects history, or do both. Why?
There are lots of reasons. A simple but inadequate statement would be that it's because I like history. However, that affinity of mine flows from deeper sources, and that's what I will talk about.
We are history. The languages we speak are huge reservoirs of cultural background. Why we speak the language we speak, what we read, and why we like to read, or why we don't like to read, these all result from the paths that have led us as societies, sectors of societies, and individuals to our current places in time and space. How we became who we are influences how we see the world, how we react to situations, and how we make judgments.
History is all around us. Natural history is engraved in our physical world, in the geography and geology we discover and study. Political and social history are embedded in our built world, in our buildings, in the bricks and mortar and other materials that form them, in the patterns visible within our cities, in the appearance of our countryside, and in the means – honourable and despicable – by which we relate to the other forms of life around us. Social and technological history are manifest in the many things with which we surround ourselves, our furniture, our utensils, our clothes, our food.
Indeed, our lives are lived following a script that was handed down to us by history, many elements of that script already written even though we might not suspect this to be the case. We act out those lives against a great backdrop of historical staging.
These are some of the sources of my fascination for history. To be aware of that history makes it much more engaging, in my opinion. And so in my novels I try to find historical hooks on which to hang parts of the tales that I unfold.
There seems to be no practical limit to the numbers of these hooks that are available, and few limitations on how one can combine them in fiction. So the stories evolve, sometimes in ways that leave the reader knowing what the characters do not, sometimes the other way about, but sometimes neither being sure what's going on and the narrator enjoying the role of master of the marionettes.
So, for me, history can provide the main structural elements of the plot, the quirks and events that send the story's characters into whatever tangle or abyss the author wants them to confront, and the elements that bring the story to its conclusion.
One hopes that each story, whatever form it takes, incorporates the most appropriate slices of the human condition, and comes across with humour, elegance, depth, and subtlety.
But that depends on the author. So if you, the reader, think that the author is falling short, let her or him know.