Evidence is always partial. Facts are not truth, though they are part of it information is not knowledge. And history is not the past it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past. Its the record of whats left on the record. Its the plan of the positions taken, when we to stop the dance to note them down. Its whats left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it a few stones, scraps of writing, scraps of cloth. It is no more the past than a birth certificate is a birth, or a script is a performance, or a map is a journey. It is the multiplication of the evidence of fallible and biased witnesses, combined with incomplete accounts of actions not fully understood by the people who performed them. Its no more than the best we can do, and often it falls short of that.
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About Hilary Mantel
Hilary Mantel was a 20th-century British writer. Dame Hilary Mary Mantel was a British writer whose work includes historical fiction, personal memoirs and short stories. Her first published novel, Every Day Is Mother's Day, was released in 1985. Read more on Wikipedia →