For Historians, Creative Writers Provide A Kind

The Things You Think Are The Disasters In Your Life Are Not The Disasters Really. Almost Anything Can Be Turned Around: Out Of Every Ditch, A Path, If You Can Only See It.

If I Am Feeling Broken, I Can Pick Up One Of [ivy Compton-burnett] Books And The Next Morning I Can Write Again. It Puts My Mechanism Back.

Beneath Every History, Another History.

When I Came To Write My Thomas Cromwell Books, I Moved Onto The Center Ground Of English History, But I Was Never There Before. I Didn't Feel It Was My History Particularly, Coming From Northern Britain, Being Of Irish Extraction, Being A Cradle Catholic. The Image Of England I Grew Up With Felt Somewhere Else. There Was An Official England In Postcards, But It Wasn't One I Had Visited. But I Decided To March Onto The Center Ground And Occupy It Whether It Was Mine Or Not.

This Was An Idea Peculiar To Camille, Maximilien Thought, That The Worse Things Get, The Better They Get. No One Else Seems To Think This Way.