Incidentally – and following on from my last post – I used to think that writing novels must be far easier than writing history; not insisting, as history does, that you are bound by facts, but allowing you instead to make them up as you go along. What freedom! However, having just ventured momentarily into fiction-writing (see my last post), I now realise that that assumption is totally wrong. Fiction is much harder; and mainly because it doesn’t provide you with the crutches that the facts afford you, helping you to navigate the chaos and confusion that is your imagination – if you have any of the latter at all. (Remember, my English teacher told me I didn’t.) I wonder whether other authors who have switched from history to fiction have felt the same? (I know one here in Sweden who is trying to make the transition, and finding it difficult. I must have a chat with her.)
I may take up my ‘alternative history’ novel again, later; but shorn of my previous happy illusion that it will be a doddle, probably to be completed in a couple of months. Come on, imagination; buck yourself up!
Serious blogging will, I hope, resume later.
Porter’s Pensées 
Glad to see you’re blogging again, Bernard.
I think casting Karl Marx as Jack the Ripper would certainly attract attention but I’m not sure it would be of the sort you want, unless you’re hoping to win a bursary from the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Of course there’s a whole debate about the differences and similarities between what historians and historical novelists do, probably dating back to before postmodernism and lately embodied by Hilary Mantel.
I wonder why it is that academic historians so rarely write historical novels? I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head. Is it considered infra dig? Then again, it may be that they do it using a nom-de-plume. Maybe the Flashman novels were really written by Hugh Trevor-Roper.
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Good to read you’re back blogging.
Btw I thought your autobiography idea a good one. You have lived through interesting times, why not record your experiences?
For example you were innthe North East during its decline, what were your thoughts?
And it doesn’t have to be a physical book; just do it on this blog, or a separate one with a link.
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