Fiction and Non Fiction books

There are loads of fiction books about Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of the French King Louis VII, then divorced him and married King Henry II of England, mother of Richard the Lionheart and King John, theres an even better biography of her by historian Alison Weir. Her's on of the most amazing stories in history, even the biography almost reads like fiction, she was one of the most remarkable people I think the world has ever seen.

I agree about E of A, and indeed British history in general. A few years ago I set myself the challenge to read it all from the Roman invasion to recent. I didn’t do it in chronological order but chose the best books by the best authors in hardback as and when I could find/afford them.

I didn’t complete my challenge in the end, ground to a halt at around the end of the Stuarts. But then some years on and now reading intensely about the interwar war years, its politics across Europe, its literature and its poetry. I find it fascinating comparing say Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis and Richard Aldington with their right wing mindset to T.S.Eliot, (intensely Roman Catholic), and the Brithsh/American left wing. Its also fascinating what happened to all these writers after WW2. The Spender & Isherwood connection post war is fascinating too but rooted in the interwar. This has involved some detailed reading about the war itself, which convinces me we have progressed no one jot since the Romans departed. 

You observed in another post about disliking revisionism, though didn’t specifically use the word. And again my understanding of history through the reading leads me to agree with you. There is clearly no absolute truth, no absolute right and wrong. When we put ourselves in the position of say the Tudor court without arrogantly taking 21C values with us, things make sense and we are I believe better humans for appreciating that their truth was quite different to the perceived truth of the 21C. This is challenging though for an inevitable consequence is that we have to accept the why of 1930s Germany, of Stalin’s Soviet empire, even Putin. 

I agree about E of A, and indeed British history in general. A few years ago I set myself the challenge to read it all from the Roman invasion to recent. I didn’t do it in chronological order but chose the best books by the best authors in hardback as and when I could find/afford them.

I didn’t complete my challenge in the end, ground to a halt at around the end of the Stuarts. But then some years on and now reading intensely about the interwar war years, its politics across Europe, its literature and its poetry. I find it fascinating comparing say Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis and Richard Aldington with their right wing mindset to T.S.Eliot, (intensely Roman Catholic), and the Brithsh/American left wing. Its also fascinating what happened to all these writers after WW2. The Spender & Isherwood connection post war is fascinating too but rooted in the interwar. This has involved some detailed reading about the war itself, which convinces me we have progressed no one jot since the Romans departed. 

You observed in another post about disliking revisionism, though didn’t specifically use the word. And again my understanding of history through the reading leads me to agree with you. There is clearly no absolute truth, no absolute right and wrong. When we put ourselves in the position of say the Tudor court without arrogantly taking 21C values with us, things make sense and we are I believe better humans for appreciating that their truth was quite different to the perceived truth of the 21C. This is challenging though for an inevitable consequence is that we have to accept the why of 1930s Germany, of Stalin’s Soviet empire, even Putin.