LETTERS
The past on its own terms
I read Suleiman Mourad’s absorbing article, A Clash of Civilisations?, shortly after reading your equally revealing interview with Hilary Mantel (both June). I am struck by the similarity in their approaches to their respective disciplines.
In the context of the writing of history, Mourad says: “We have inadvertently allowed modern agendas – one Eurocentric, the other Islamocentric – to determine the way we have reconstructed crusader history.” In the context of the writing of historical fiction, Mantel says: “There’s no point writing about the past if what you really want to write(as well as that in Al Jazeera’s more recent documentary on the crusades); Mantel acknowledges the link between her writing and recent studies of Cromwell.
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