As far back as Lucky Jim, if not further, historians and writers of historical fiction have been at each others’ throats. The Historical Writers Association (HWA) was formed in October 2010 with the unique selling point that it is the only historical organisation open to both historians and historical novelists. Other organisations such as the Royal Historical Society and the Historical Association are strictly for writers and teachers of non-fiction.
It is obvious that many writers have something to gain here. For many years, historical fiction has been viewed as intellectually unsatisfactory, dependent on the archetypes of sex, fantasy, war or crime mystery to attract readers. Despite several historical novels winning the Booker Prize over the last twenty years, the general perception has been that historical fiction is something less than history and, at the same time, something less than fiction. If you want to know about a period in the past, fiction is going to give you an unreliable answer, even if it is based in part on historical evidence, because you cannot tell the accurate parts from the invented. As for the fiction, why read about a society that the author has not obviously experienced first hand? It is therefore not surprising that historical novelists want an organisation that will present their writing in a positive light, and allow them to showcase their work without connotations of it being second-rate history or irrelevant fiction.
Popular non-fiction writers also have something to gain. Most of them feel excluded from the traditional high-brow historical societies. No public body funds research by historians writing for a broad section of the public. You only need to appreciate how few copies of ‘popular’ non-fiction history sell to appreciate the problem here. Only nine or ten history books sold more than 20,000 copies in 2010, and a historian selling 6,000 hardbacks and 30,000 paperbacks will struggle to make £30,000 over two years. The fact that the taxpayer spends more than £100 million per year on university history departments is neither here nor there; anyone working outside higher education is specifically excluded from almost all historical research grant programmes in the UK. So, it is not surprising that popular writers want a louder voice, more sales and (in due course) access to research funds.
What unites historical novelists and popular historians is an interest in the past and the need for public representation. However, many things divide them. While novelists often emphasise how much research goes into their novels, it is very rarely as much as a conscientious historian will put into a non-fiction book: novelists need only to find the factual details that are relevant to their stories whereas historians have has to consult all the evidence relevant to their subjects. Also, it is sometimes justifiable for novelists knowingly to misrepresent past reality because their greater purpose is telling a good tale. For example, if a medieval figure is known to have married a certain person but we don’t know when or where, the novelist may make up the circumstances. It is never justifiable for the historian to do this.
The most divisive factor, however, is hierarchical. Just as popular historians normally hope for the approval of their academic peers in universities, many of the better historical novelists want their works to be acknowledged as reliable or ‘accurate’ by popular historians. The trouble is that each step of this hierarchy requires the adoption of a completely different set of values. Few university scholars want to be seen endorsing a popular history book by a non-academic because it may be perceived as a lowering of academic standards. Likewise, not all popular historians want to endorse the historical content of a historical novel because, inevitably, large parts of it are made up. Endorsing it may detract from their reputation as a ‘good historian’.
In all this, the best possible outcome would be for a writer to produce some ‘great historical writing’. By this I mean a book that makes a powerful impact on society for more than a generation. This can be fiction or non-fiction. No one can doubt the cultural impact of books such as The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire or Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. Nor can one ignore the impact of historical novelists like Robert Graves, Mary Renault and Patrick O’Brien. For great historical writing is not primarily about the past: it is about the human race – what we have experienced, what we have suffered, what we can achieve. It is this truism that might bring historians and historical novelists closer together. But will the new organisation encourage great historical writing along these lines? Only time will tell.
Dr Ian Mortimer is an independent scholar and the bestselling author of the Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England. He also writes fiction under the name James Forrester; his new novel, The Roots of Betrayal, is published by Headline today.
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