ABSTRACT
To write history requires a leap of the imagination. To write history requires a degree of creativity. To write history requires active, critical powers of selection, analysis, representation. From disparate pieces of material, historians form coherent shapes which they present in ways which will be accessible, interesting, even entertaining, for contemporary audiences. But it does not follow from all this – as some highly influential theorists would have it – that history is little different from fiction, and that we must concede a degree of relativism in which any historical account is in principle as good as any other, and the only criteria of choice are aesthetic considerations or political or moral or other personal preferences.
