Fred Kaplan Quotes

It can be a long gap between the emergence of fully researched historical biographies.

I believe that historians and analysts of historical events need the authority of facts supplied by living witnesses to the events, which they make their subject.

I feel that historical novelists owe it to our readers to try to be as historically accurate as we can with the known facts. Obviously, we have to fill in the blanks. And then in the final analysis, we're drawing upon our own imaginations. But I think that readers need to be able to trust an author.

First and foremost, telling historical stories is very tricky because it is something that is known. It is not like you can tell a lie or change something that is written in black and white.

Every historian with professional standards speaks or writes what he believes to be true.

I feel very strongly that where the facts exist, a historical novelist should use them if they're writing about a person who really lived, because a lot of people come to history through historical novels. I did. And a lot of people want their history that way.

I am no historian but have tried to stick tight to the facts.

When you are absorbed in a biographical subject, you get so close you don't realise the potential effect of what you say. You are trying to get at the truth.

The thing that most attracts me to historical fiction is taking the factual record as far as it is known, using that as scaffolding, and then letting imagination build the structure that fills in those things we can never find out for sure.

I love being in the archives, traveling, sitting in dusty places and looking at books with brittle pages. I love reading biographies and researching, to make myself informed about whatever political or historical time I'm writing about. From there, a lot of the emotional truths about my characters emerge.

The duty of a historian is simply to understand and then convey that understanding, no more than that.

The lovers of romance can go elsewhere for satisfaction but where can the lovers of truth turn if not to history?

History is only conjecture, and the best historians try to do it as accurately as they can. They try to accurately reassemble the facts and then put them down on paper.

A historian is battling all the time to remember as much as possible.

Nobody knows what really happened in any historical period. There are some periods where we know more than others, though.

Everyone relates differently to contemporary stuff. They rely on you to do the research for a period film.

I always try to find a story in the margins of history, but I don't like to do too much that's improbable.

To be a good researcher is to be a good detective, and I enjoy ferreting out tidbits of information. For a diary book like 'A Coal Miner's Bride,' newspapers come in handy for small everyday details such as weather reports.

Initial work is on period research where the historical markers are absolutely non-negotiable. Once that is established, a writer can take creative liberties in terms of chronology to suit the story.

I am not someone who believes I am going to find a historical scoop.

I write novels, mostly historical ones, and I try hard to keep them accurate as to historical facts, milieu and flavor.

While writing 'Half of a Yellow Sun,' I enjoyed playing with minor things: inventing a train station in a town that has none, placing towns closer to each other than they are, changing the chronology of conquered cities. Yet I did not play with the central events of that time.

The historian is terribly responsible to what he can discern are the facts of the case, but he's nothing if he doesn't make out a case.

Everything in 'The Tudors' is initially based on my historical research, and the fact is that the most unlikely scenes were the ones which were probably most based on reality. I prefer to be as real as possible, and there is so much of that story that you just can't make up.

When you think of how history is revealed, we know certain things to be facts at certain periods of time, which turn out not to be so factual as time marches on.