Morgen Witzel compares history and historical fiction. Good history tells us what probably happened. Good historical fiction tells us what might have happened, and makes us believe it is real.
'I've watched films that have been adapted from books or short stories and then I read the original material to see how close the adaptation is to the source material; it's enjoyable, and a really good exercise. '
'You didn't know that the same shifts in history writing which meant that Unstead could write history for children largely from below, was also changing history for grown ups, and so changing the path you'd marked out for yourself.'
Arriving in Britain from her native Australia Cherise Saywell wondered if she would ever find the confidence to write. More recently, she has found that being an outsider may be no bad thing for a writer.
Having grown up with a chronic illness, Ann Morgan became fascinated by the number of other writers who have suffered from poor health and by the way some have explored this in their writing.
A lifelong fascination with history has shaped John Pilkington’s career as a novelist — as well as offering insights into vanished eras, he argues, writing about the past can be a way of understanding the present.
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15-12-2016
Jennifer Potter speaks with George Miller about her acclaimed biography of the John Tradescants, father and son, and her cultural history of the rose.
Audiobooks are for non-readers, thought Katharine Grant — before she tried them and fell under their spell. Now, reading Joyce, she has become ‘one of those laughing walkers you instinctively avoid’; reading Edmund de Waal, she is a woman who cries at the supermarket checkout.
25-08-2016
Harriet Castor speaks with Julia Copus about engaging young readers with history, and why she wanted to climb inside the head of Henry VIII.
30-07-2015
Pascale Petit explores the catharsis she experiences by transforming trauma into art.
Julia Copus considers the impact of serious illness on the life of the creative artist.
Writing for emotional survival is familiar; writing for physical survival less so. Yet the physical act of writing raised Sara Coleridge from her sickbed, reassures Hilary Mantel, comforts Laura Hillenbrand and, during a recent medical crisis, kept Katharine Grant ‘threaded to the world’. Never mind words, the act of writing is medicine.