Battles and Hastings
The editor of the Evening Standard reflects on the romantic roots of his interest in history.
I was born in 1945, into a generation in which history and romance were still inextricably entwined. We read historical fiction avidly from the age of eight or nine; Conan Doyle’s medieval tales and his exploits of Brigadier Gerard. Rosemary Sutcliffe, D.K. Broster, G.A. Henty, and – from my teens - a lot of Scott. The description of the last hours of the condemned Jacobite rebel in Waverley still seems to me a superbly powerful piece of prose. Ivanhoe goes without saying. The Heart of Midlothian was a less predictable favourite. Kenilworth, for some reason, established a special hold over me. One school holiday, I persuaded my mother to drive me up to Warwickshire to look upon the ruins of that wonderful fortress.
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