They sang ‘Nearer My God to Thee’ as the Titanic went down

To me, history has always had a double magic. On the one hand it is a remorseless, objective account of what actually happened, brutally honest, from which there is no appeal to sentiment. On the other, it is a past wreathed in mists and half-glimpses, poetic, glamorous and sinister, peopled by daemonic or angelic figures, who thrill, enchant and terrify. I like both, and see them as complementary. My father taught me the first, under his maxim: ‘Never believe a historical event as fact unless you can document it.’ My mother taught me the second, when I was a child cradled in her arms, listening to her soft, musical voice discoursing of heroes and heroines, and strange, uplifting events. She had, and conveyed to me, her own version of history, in which curiously enough women were prominent, indeed predominant. For her, Boudicca was a wronged mother, seeking not revenge but justice. Joan of Arc was a bewildered teenager, a reader of stories, burning with the desire to sacrifice herself on the altar of romantic patriotism. This girl said: ‘My armour is my beauty.’ She told me of Queen Matilda, persecuted by the wicked Stephen (‘a typical 12th-century man’), of Mary, Queen of Scots (‘rather too fond of dogs for my taste’), of Grace Darling, Florence Nightingale, and of the sharp-eared lady who, in the Siege of Lucknow, first heard the pipes of the rescuing Highlanders.

One of my mother’s finest stories, of which I remember every syllable to this day, concerned the sinking of the Titanic. This had occurred in 1912, when my mother was just 18, and had left an immense impression on her. ‘I would have loved to have gone on the maiden voyage of that tragic liner, if only to discover whether I had the courage to behave nobly.’