The higher American patriotism, on the other hand, combines loyalty to historical tradition and precedent with the imaginative projection of an ideal national Promise.
For us, universal values such as justice, morality and peace cannot be disputed and it is for this reason that we pursue the restoration of historical truth.
People always ask me, ‘Why so many historical dramas?’ Because those are the best roles I get to play, and I get to play heroes in those roles.
Cavani has been a historical figure for PSG. He’s scored so many goals. He’s a winner; he’s a leader. He’s very much respected in France as a player but also as a man because of his values.
In general, I think my freedom of invention is not limited when I use historical characters.
I’ve played so many historical characters because most horrible dictators are short, fat, middle-aged men.
I have no desire to write historical anything or futuristic anything – I want to find a way to get at the essence of what it’s like to be alive now. The reason why great novels from centuries ago are still great is because that’s what they were doing; it’s like a message from another culture.
When our systematic knowledge of human expressive behavior is more advanced, it will be possible to study the literary and historical documents of the past and to determine the expressed and implied views of personality that determined the behavior of our ancestors.
If you lift the romantic element out of my plots, you still have fully formed mysteries. In the same fashion, if you pull the mystery out of a historical romance, you are left with a perfectly satisfying story.
A judgment pronounced in accordance with the facts can therefore assign to it an historical place only within that movement of reformation which was brought to a victorious issue by King Josiah.
‘A Spy in the House’, the first of Y. S. Lee’s ‘The Agency’ novels, is pure confection, an historical romp through England at the height of The Great Stink that imagines a secret spy ring for women tucked away where few notice but powerful factions clamor for their services.
Through historical accident, we’ve ended up with a global network that pretty much allows anybody to communicate with anyone else at any time.
There is no justifiable prediction about how the hypothesis will hold up in the future; its degree of corroboration simply is a historical statement describing how severely the hypothesis has been tested in the past.
If anything, Brown is more oriented towards the other side of the Atlantic than Blair. Most of his reforming ideas and intellectual influences seem to come from the United States, and in a recent speech he went to great lengths to emphasise the historical affinity and shared characteristics of the U.K. and the U.S.
I don’t normally do pure historical work.
In my own recent String Trio I attempt to superimpose two quite different sets of formal strategies, both of which, ultimately, refer back to historical precedent.
It is a matter of public shame that while we have now commemorated our hundredth anniversary, not one in every ten children attending Public schools throughout the colonies is acquainted with a single historical fact about Australia.
Everybody wants to talk about sectarian conflicts of the war in Iraq, but the fact of the matter is, Sunnis have lived with Shias in harmony more in the confines of Iraq, in that land, than they have been in conflict. That’s an historical fact.
Whenever I’ve had to tamper with history for plot purposes, I make sure to mention that in my author’s note, and I try to keep such tampering to a bare minimum. I also attempt to keep my characters true to their historical counterparts. This is not always possible, of course.
Students of American glass must always keep in mind that the creations they collect are truly examples of our American culture… and thus have historical significance.
It is of course the nature of historical contraction that the shortest distance to a historical destination is never a straight line.
Until affirmative action is described and understood as one mechanism by which to make amends for historical wrongdoing against members of marginalized communities, it will fail to meaningfully address the inequality that exists as a direct result of federal policy.
Jesus walking on water is an allegory, not fluid mechanics. God destroying the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah is a warning, not a historical battle. Doubting Thomas is an example, not a person. The story of Noah, with all of its scientific and historical impossibilities, can be read the same way.
The Internet has improved a lot in the last few years, but still, you wouldn’t want to depend on Web sources for historical analysis. There’s just something hard to beat about a book.
Because the New Testament provides the primary historical source for information on the resurrection, many critics during the 19th century attacked the reliability of these biblical documents.
I research the role, and if it’s a literary character, I read the book, and if it’s an historical figure, I research documents and biographies. If it’s a fictional character, I work off the script.
The knife of historical relativism… which has cut to pieces all metaphysics and religion must also bring about healing.
I’d love to do historical pictures more, but I don’t know if I can.
The idea of making a film – a film that I had certainly never seen before – about the slave experience was a huge responsibility. It’s a project that requires a wider understanding of the geopolitical nature of the slave trade, of historical and modern-day racism.
I’ve just written a very gritty, non-magical take on the King Arthur legend, ‘Here Lies Arthur,’ and I’m currently toying with some other historical ideas, as well as working with the illustrator David Wyatt on some sequels to my Victorian space opera ‘Larklight.’
I remember a period where my publisher said to me, ‘Look, your historical work is selling much better than your contemporary work, so please give us more historicals.’
I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement.
I wouldn’t mind spending six months a year having a private jet take me around the world to visit natural and historical landmarks like the Egyptian pyramids, Mount Kilimanjaro or the Taj Mahal.
Though I enjoy playing historical characters, it is very taxing.
My obsessions stay the same – historical memory and historical erasure. I am particularly interested in the Americas and how a history that is rooted in colonialism, the language and iconography of empire, disenfranchisement, the enslavement of peoples, and the way that people were sectioned off because of blood.
However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I’m concerned.
I think that those are the things that you can uniquely do with film that are difficult to do anywhere else: they can bring a picture to life, give it a natural and historical context and make you feel that everything else is suddenly credible.
Baseball may be our national pastime, but the age-old tradition of taking a swing at Congress is a sport with even deeper historical roots in the American experience. Since the founding of our country, citizens from Ben Franklin to David Letterman have made fun of their elected officials.
I think I was in the most historical and golden era of track and field.
I’m still committed to the success of the U.K. and the belief of the strong intelligence and passion and determination of the British people. I’m a strong believer of their long-term historical success.
Understanding the true causes of the Depression, as well as the real economic record of the United States in the 1930s, is an essential ingredient in anyone’s economic and historical education.
In 1976, I read a book by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss and knew immediately that I, too, could write a historical romance. It took me a year to complete the manuscript. I was a forty-year-old Scarborough housewife who knew no one in publishing.
For novelists, the imagination is everything. The trick is to guide one’s imagination using research. I love using old maps. When I wrote my novels on London and New York, I found wonderful historical atlases. Paris has the most lavish maps of all.
Denouncing Nazis is the easiest thing in the world: All it requires is a modicum of historical perspective and a working moral compass.
I happened to happened to land in a time, in the middle ’60s, that without knowing it, and without being told by the history of theater – which we now see from a historical point of view was an explosive time.
I feel like it’s hard to get into historical novels where you know what the story is far too well.
The town of St. Charles near St. Louis was founded by a trapper named Blanchette. There is a section that’s called Frenchtown on historical markers.
A historical event represents the best and the worst of that moment.
Nobody knows what really happened in any historical period. There are some periods where we know more than others, though.
