Forum: Historians and Facts
Jonathan Steinberg reveals his fondness for facts, the underpinnings of history.
Facts are out of fashion. They are boring, soul-destroying and unsophisticated. Ideas, flair, imagination count and the pupil who simply 'gives you facts' gets the dread B++ mark, the mark for the stolid, uninspired recitation of factual material.
Now, as it happens, I have a soft spot for facts. Some of my fondness is that of the hereditary sporting bore. I can still recite the players on the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers who played that memorable all-New York baseball world series in 1941. I can do the heavyweight boxing champions, most of the baseball pennant winners up to the early 1950s, when circumstances severed me from my national game, and a fairish share of the players on the more important English first division football teams – that is, I can do Arsenal or Ipswich but lose heart in the Stoke or Sunderland mid-fields.
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