Stronger Than Fact?
Derek Wilson argues the merits of the historical novel as a valid and enjoyable means of fuelling interest in the past
I have no idea how an apple tree works. The quiet machine beneath the bark is quite beyond my ken. But, like the next man along, I find Imagination always willing to leap into Ignorance's breach.' So Mick Jackson opens his Booker short-listed novel, The Underground Man (Macmillan 1997), based loosely on the activities of that eccentric tunneller, the Duke of Portland. If we were to substitute for 'an apple tree' the single word 'history' we would have an acceptable definition of the work of the historical novelist – and also that of the 'serious' historian.
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