Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
I honestly can't understand how any one would make that mistake.
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Nor do I, but a number of people in this thread have said that their preferred method of learning about historical events is to read historical fiction rather than history, so it does appear to be a fairly widespread view.
Of course there's good and bad historical fiction, but even the best fiction isn't necessarily good history. Eg, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, Hilary Mantel's Booker prize-winning "Wolf Hall", a fictionalised biography of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII, has been criticised by historians for painting a misleading portrait of Cromwell, so to read the novel and think you know about Cromwell as a result might perhaps be unwise.
I agree with you, though: fiction is fiction, not history.