Alex's Historical Fiction

I don't want to discuss it

No, I'm not referring to the lack of a 'no' regarding the job I went for. Waiting for the chop is probably worse than actually getting rejected. What's wrong with a quick phone call? The one time someone managed to do that for me, I was actually quite grateful they'd saved themselves time, paper and a stamp. And the experience was relatively positive, in fact. Sometimes a swift no is a relief.

But I digress ... It's to do with discussing history. I think that if my areas of interest actually had some hard and fast dates, I might be interested in exploring interpretation of the evidence. But the 5th-6th century hasn't really got anything tangible to discuss. There are certain sources one has to be aware of, but that's about it. It's more a matter of opinion. I have my opinion, and other people have theirs. But the latter often don't think it's opinion, they think they've based their theory on fact. Er, no! But try telling them that. It is therefore, a pointless exercise. Arthurnet is often the place to find the unhelpful discussions I am referring to. As Carla said, it's a jousting match!

Just occasionally, someone comes up with an interesting angle, and I have pause for thought, but that's exceedingly rare these days. I had even heard about the Sarmatian theory (which led to the recent King Arthur film) before it gained some notoriety in the late 1990s: it was mentioned in a newspaper sometime in the 1970s - I have the cutting somewhere ...

posted by Alex Bordessa @ Monday, March 27, 2006