Thursday 28 September 2017

The Persistence of History


Yesterday I was completing the daily YouGov poll and one of the questions pertained to persistence, There were three choices appertaining as to how persistent I am at completing a task; I clicked on the very persistent answer, but nothing happened to indicate the choice had been registered. I pressed again, and again, and yet again. It must have taken me about 10 stabs at my phone screen to get it to register my choice. I did wonder it the question was a test of the truth of my answer.


I'm an avid devourer of historical biographies. History is written from official documents and, most importantly, letters. Important characters from the past, especially the aristocracy, have left enormous piles of letters. How then, in these days of transient email, will historians of the future come to know as much about historical characters as we did in the past?


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