It can be a long gap between the emergence of fully researched historical biographies.
I have a fondness for historical fiction, something wondrous like ‘Wolf Hall,’ but I’ll read most anything as long as the story grabs my mind or my heart, and preferably both. You would be hard pressed, however, to find science fiction on my shelves.
The historical background is one of the easier aspects of writing a novel. Far more difficult is dreaming up the smaller, character-based scenes, scenes that rise entirely from one’s own imagination.
Familiar life, tending to sordidness, had been succeeded by remote life, generally idealized; historical detail had been brought in to teach readers who were being entertained.
I did a great deal of research to write ‘The Irish Duke.’ Since all the people in this Lords of the Realm series are real historical characters, everything had to be authentic. I researched Woburn Abbey, where my heroine lived, and everything about Barons Court in Ireland, which was the ancestral home of Abercorn.
The exposure I have had to beautiful materials across the world, from Japan to Italy, enables me to pull design ideas together. This, combined with years of historical research, has created a great fountain of ideas for me.
I like historical fiction. I fell in love with New Orleans the first time I visited it. And I wanted to place a story in New Orleans.
At the Museum of Roman Art, the logic of the forms is very much modern. But in spite of that, the idea of the construction could be related to a historical time.
It could be sci-fi, love story, historical drama what counts for me is the fact that they’re made by great directors with a great point of view who bring the audience to be elevated and at the same time entertained. That’s what cinema is.
Our shared historical experiences led myself and Mitterrand to the decision that we must do everything to prevent further wars.
My wife, Lisa, and I both grew up on wuxia – Chinese historical romances. They’re kind of analogous to Western epics. They’re based on history, just like ‘the Iliad’ and ‘the Odyssey’ are based on history, but they’re romanticized, and a lot of fantasy elements have been added.
Not that I wish by any means to deny, that the mental life of individuals and peoples is also in conformity with law, as is the object of philosophical, philological, historical, moral, and social sciences to establish.
Jung Chang was the first person to tell a grand historical, political story through a personal narrative.
I found a great book called ‘Slang Through the Ages’ by Jonathon Green. It’s basically a thesaurus of historical slang, and had lots of great old uses.
I can think of films that I’m producing right now that are extremely hard-hitting, graphic films, that nobody necessarily wants to see, graphic in terms of violence, of adult content and racial and historical subject matter.
Winston was a bit of a challenge, all right, from a lot of different perspectives. It wasn’t just the culture or the class divide or the historical baggage – it was also the age difference. We had to see if I could be aged-up legitimately, without it becoming some sort of hokey acting challenge.
You’ll notice that my books offer great variety. Some are for adults, some for children and some for teens. There are mysteries, historical novels, picture books, love stories and stories of crisis and courage.
I see a lot of patterns in our behavior as a nation that parallel a lot of other historical processes.
I’ve always been drawn to historical fiction.
There are a lot of historical lofts in Houston, and it’s amazing for me that a lot of them were built in the 1920s. I love the exposed bricks and the very industrial stuff.
I did not intend for there to be an incisive historical lesson in ‘North and South.’ Basically, it’s just a good, juicy story.
Romantic fiction, in the broader sense, can be any novel that has a love story somewhere in it. It can be a mystery or a historical novel, as long as it has this very strong romantic thread running through it.
I would like people to get a differentiated historical view of Germany.
A film seeking to create change on a difficult issue should not try to provide a definitive historical overview, nor present an op-ed style argument.
Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth – that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible.
The Arab world needs to appreciate that legitimate historical claims and modern necessities are what make Israel the homeland of the Jewish people.
Historical facts are the vital framework around which non-fiction writers construct their narratives; they are, quite simply, indispensable.
I have always regarded historical fiction and fantasy as sisters under the skin, two genres separated at birth.
Most fourth graders can’t say why Abraham Lincoln is an important historical figure? Wow. This is far more distressing than if the news had been that fourth graders were bad at reciting multiplication tables, because you can, in fact, Google that.
Watergate got us to think of leaders as mere mortals. America began to think of itself in a very different way – I would say a salutary way – and Reagan was most important in shifting the grand dynamic thrust of the American historical process by ending that.
What ‘Strong Island’ does is bring a historical perspective and help people understand that what we’re treating as a modern-day phenomenon is actually not modern. It’s actually quite old.
My own view is that taping of conversations for historical purposes was a bad decision on the part of all the presidents. I don’t think Kennedy should have done it. I don’t think Johnson should have done it, and I don’t think we should have done it.
Science fiction is like a blender – you can put in any historical experience and take influences from everything you see, read or experience.
Real stories – whether in pure fiction or historical – have a certain indefinable power; we are endlessly curious about the past and hungry for learning that we hope will illuminate the present.
Americans must outgrow the unbecoming arrogance that leads us to assert that America somehow owns a monopoly on goodness and truth – a belief that leads some to view the world as but a stage on which to play out the great historical drama: the United States of America versus the Powers of Evil.
When you walk in the front of the White House, the pictures on the walls, they change out pretty frequently. They’re all very cool and historical, with pictures from the current term and past terms.
Mere recording of an event will not make it a historical document. It will become obsolete with time. Only those that emotionally connect with the audience will stand the test of time.
The historical evidence shows that shareholders usually greatly benefit from mergers.
I’m a history buff, and right now we’re sitting on one of the most dramatic historical shifts that this planet has ever seen and we have a front row seat for it.
Even though the method of ‘Harvest’ was a historical novel, its intentions were that of a modern novel. I’m asking you to think about land being seized in Brazil by soya barons. It’s also a novel about immigration.
In becoming a citizen, one undertakes certain duties and responsibilities. One of the more intangible of those duties and responsibilities is no matter what one’s birth and background, to accept the historical past of the new country as one’s own.
History tends to take the simplest possible view. As soon as you start to scratch the surface of any historical event, it starts to become more and more complicated, which is not the stuff of Hollywood films. Complications tend to break down the budget.
I don’t want to be a historical action figure or treated like I’m dead. Like one of those people where they go, ‘Oh, isn’t she dead?’ And then I walk up, and they’re like, ‘Whoa.’ I can’t really complain… because I’ve made myself into a historical action figure. I was like, ‘Yeah, come on in!’
I enjoy thinking myself into other times and places. I don’t like some of the conventions of the ‘historical novel’, but I think there’s a way of doing it that has a lot of merit.
The power of historical fiction for bad and for good can be immense in shaping consciousness of the past.
I am not a fan of historical fiction that is sloppy in its research or is dishonest about the real history.
If you cut me open, you would find bits of me looking at things with an aesthetic eye, also with a historical eye. But mostly at the way things have transported themselves through time.
In 1987, the United States celebrates the bicentennial anniversary of the constitutional convention that provided the basic rules for the American political order. This convention was one of the very few historical examples in which political rules were deliberately chosen.
Political history is not the only way to approach historical figures.
For a long time, I’ve been interested in cultural memory and historical erasure.
Back in my 20s, when I wrote ‘A Place of Greater Safety,’ the French Revolution novel, I thought, ‘I’ll always have to write historical novels because I can’t do plots.’ But in the six years of writing that novel, I actually learned to write, to invent things.
