Winston’s War
Is it history or fiction? Is it better than both, or worse than either? Robert Pearce wrestles with these questions.
'I often think it odd that it should be so dull,' pronounced the heroine in Northanger Abbey on the subject of history, 'for a great deal of it must be invention … and invention is what delights me in other books.' This is not most historians' favourite quotation. We are likely to respond, somewhat pompously, that we don't invent, we merely 'breathe life' into our sources, or even that perceptions of dullness often reflect the quality of readers' minds - that to the dull all things are dull.
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