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Originally Posted by Bookpossum
We seem to be wandering away from talking about Tey's book, and I'm certainly partly responsible for that!
Do we want to drag ourselves back to the actual book, or are we having too much fun leading ourselves astray?
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Too much fun!
I think the controversy of the historical mystery is relevant to the book too. One of my favorite things about reading is the side adventures that it takes you on which enrich the experience and enhance your learning and perspectives in unexpected ways.
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Originally Posted by gmw
I assumed we would end up having the two essentially separate conversations. For me at least, the conversation about the historical mystery is the more interesting one.
It seems to me that Tey wrote with an agenda. While it is hazardous to do so, I am inclined ascribe Grant's opinions of historians to the author. It's the sort of opinion that outsiders of any speciality subject tend to carry; people are inclined to forget there are good reasons why subjects specialise. Historians may well be best advised to look to primary sources, but outsiders rely on specialists to provide useful, predigested, secondary sources so we don't have to spend the years that it takes to make qualified assessments of primary sources.
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Perhaps she had an attraction to the subject of people she believed history had not represented fairly. Wikipedia says:
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Her only non-fiction book, Claverhouse, was written as a vindication of someone she perceived to be a libeled hero: "It is strange that a man whose life was so simple in pattern and so forthright in spirit should have become a peg for every legend, bloody or brave, that belonged to his time."
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