Tag: writing

In praise of Historical Fiction

angela findlayLeave a comment

On Wednesday evening, I found myself on the third floor of Hatchards Piccadilly, surrounded by books bursting with stories – including our own – as I chaired a conversation with novelists Alice Jolly and Rachel Seiffert. Their latest books, published by Bloomsbury and Virago respectively in November 2025, were both shortlisted for the £20,000 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, which Alice went on to win. 

Rachel Seiffert, Alice Jolly and me at Hatchards Piccadilly

We were talking about historical fiction – about the challenge of imagining lives very different from our own without surrendering to easy judgment. It could easily have remained a conversation about the past. Instead, it felt urgently relevant to the present.

As I write, Iran has issued a fresh warning that it could target UK airbases that have supported the United States in its strikes. That would bring the conflict to RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. The thought of my own county becoming part of a war in the Middle East feels surreal. 

While their books couldn’t be more different in style, both explore overlooked and little-known corners of life within the broader history of the Third Reich. Alice’s The Matchbox Girl is a fictional account of the real, deeply controversial Dr Asperger, who worked in the pioneering Curative Education Ward at the Vienna Children’s Hospital. The narrator is a fictional young woman, Adelheid Brunner, a non-verbal patient at the clinic and keen observer of the gathering force of Nazism around her. 

Rachel’s Once the Deed is Done is set on the Lüneburg Heath in northern Germany in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Through multiple perspectives – a schoolteacher, a policeman’s son, British Red Cross workers, displaced Ukrainian children and other townspeople – it explores displacement, moral uncertainty and the first days of British occupation.

The conversation that followed warmed my heart. Normally at such events – not least the recent Chalke Valley History Festival where Henry Montgomery, James Holland and I came together to talk about Remembrance of the World Wars – I find myself the sole female voice encouraging people, both in Germany and England, to suspend judgment of those traditionally and easily cast as bad or evil, and to ask instead how they came to commit such deeds. This time, I wasn’t alone.

Fiction can offer wonderful paths into the internal worlds of characters. To bring them fully to life, writers have to feel their way into their skin, their homes, their times, their heads. As both authors said, by doing so you discover the parts within yourself that are capable of, well, everything. Of extreme kindness or heroism, or ignorance and cruelty. We are it all.

Elif Shafak, another of my favourite writers, speaks so eloquently on this for the Hay Festival’s July Book Club. You can listen to her here. Her novel, The Island of Missing Trees, has to be one of my favourites ever and a wonderful summer read. 

Almost everywhere in the world, there will be people who harbour hate and revenge in their hearts; who want to foster cultures of blame, division and judgment. Politics, the media and social media can all too easily encourage this. Things are taken out of context, like cutting out an image of a person with scissors and collaging it into a different setting to paint that same person a stronger shade of dark. A stark light that casts harsh shadows robs the picture of essential shades of grey. Such dramatisation is too often rewarded with more votes, more sales, and more clicks. My German grandfather and I were recently the objects of such a process of reduction to black and white stereotypes – the evil Wehrmacht officer and the condemnatory granddaughter – in an article in a prominent German magazine. It was shocking. Upsetting. Untrue. Damaging. But ultimately so BORING in its familiarity!

We all recognise how women’s voices, stories, experiences and points of view have been overlooked and suppressed throughout history. Men’s bodies and characteristics have long dominated as yardsticks by which we set temperatures in trains, design seatbelts in cars, define success, power and historical significance. Yet what struck me most listening to these three women was not simply that they were women, but the way they approached history itself. Rather than seeking certainty, heroes and villains, they embraced ambiguity, curiosity and the difficult work of imagining making choices they have never themselves had to make. Their words were steeped in the kind of intuitive wisdom we all possess but sometimes – understandably – feel reluctant or frightened to trust. Understanding is not the same as excusing, and empathy is not weakness but one of the foundations of peace. If we are to maintain peace in the world, I believe it is precisely this way of thinking that we need more of. 

Another military plane has just rumbled its noisy path across the sky above my little garden… my little sanctuary of flowers, dried-out lawn and views across to the streak of shimmering light that is the River Severn. 

It reminds me why conversations like Wednesday’s matter. History teaches us what happened. Fiction invites us to imagine ourselves into different situations and ask the harder question: What might I have done? 

COMING UP: 18th-20th September: Dialogues with the Severn – A celebration of the river through arts, talks and walks. Chapels of Rest, Stroud, GL51HJ. More info to follow soon.

Creativity in times of destruction…

angela findlay8 Comments

“It’s brutal.”

That’s how a friend recently described being an artist. He had been a student at Goldsmiths in the late eighties and early nineties, during the rise of the Young British Artists (YBAs) like Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin and Sarah Lucas, names that would go on to dominate the art world, thanks in part to the patronage of Charles Saatchi.

We ran into each other at the local paint shop—a regular stop for him in his current life as a decorator. Across a spread of tester pots and fillers, the conversation effortlessly turned to the day-to-day grind of being an artist. Over the summer I have been preparing for my forthcoming exhibition, In Process… (which opens today, 27th September!) and was feeling the impact of long, solitary studio days, wrestling with questions only I was posing and whose answers seemed only to matter to me. It can be a struggle: adhering to a discipline of showing up as captain to a ship with no passengers, steering a course to a nebulous destination, deep-diving into the depths of the soul, mind or body – wherever the well of creativity bubbles up – to haul tiny gems to the surface. Exhaustion and self-doubt often creep in.

‘What’s the point?’ is the main saboteur. The work seems irrelevant, the purpose elusive. There’s no financial gain, just costs. In the isolation of the studio, there’s no one to argue with those thoughts. Indeed it is easy to agree with them: Why bother?

And in times of widespread destruction – whether global or even personal – that sense of futility can grow.

This summer, for example, parts of my home were stripped back to their foundations. My life was overtaken by builders, noise, dusty cups of coffee and chaos. Creativity felt all but impossible. In the grand scheme of things, this was a minor inconvenience. Soon, things would return to normal. But what about those whose lives have been shattered by larger forces… wars, displacement, destruction and poverty on a massive scale? How does creativity find its place amidst the rubble of Gaza, Ukraine, or other war-torn regions? Or even amongst the devastating images that make their way into our minds?

History has shown that creativity can thrive in the moments when everything appears to be falling apart. Creative expression becomes a form of resilience, opposition, even survival. It can be a small act of regaining control in an otherwise uncontrollable situation; a conduit for grief, an out-breath for trauma, a balm for moral wounds. Marks on walls or scraps of paper cry out: I am still here.

In today’s news-filled world where conflicts and politics pitch people against each other while social media distracts and distorts, I feel the call to act. To do or say something that will make a difference. I contemplate taking to the streets and marching in protest. Or superglueing myself to a pavement. I wonder if ‘speaking out’ involves publishing endless blogs and posts on social media denouncing what (I feel) is wrong? Ineffectuality wears one down. 

But to me, the direction of the human race is a force majeure, too big for even the Trump to halt. We find ourselves swept in its rampageous current, both unwilling cogs in the destruction of things we once valued, and parts of an optimistic surge to re-build better. I feel feeble and impotent. When I can’t even open the lid on a jar of gherkins, how can I shift anything of significance? But maybe this disorientating maelstrom is precisely the context in which creativity becomes most vital. Maybe the internal orientation creativity demands provides a space for the mind to process, to breathe, to make light of the weight and sense of the senseless, and to find fragments of meaning in what frequently seems like an overwhelming mess.

Destruction can’t defeat creativity; it calls it forth, demanding that we seek beauty, purpose and points of connection. That process can feel ‘brutal’.  What’s the point? is never far away. But I try to remember: The point is not always to create something monumental. Nor is it to offer neat answers. Sometimes, the point is simply to make something that wasn’t there before, to keep moving forward and to hold onto the belief that every act of creation – however small and seemingly insignificant – is a counter movement, an act of defiance, a stand against that which threatens to destroy us. 

In Process… at The Vaults in Stroud

I have heaved my most recent exhibition out of a time of dark chaos. But as I – and it – clawed our way to the surface, it grew its own wings. Help came from unexpected places. Beauty emerged. And now it is there, in the Vaults, among the grapes on my vine, fruits to share.

There was a point!

You are so welcome to visit.

IN PROCESS…

In Process… Opening Times:  

  • Saturday & Sunday 27th/28th September, 11am-4pm
  • Monday 29th September – Friday 3rd October, 2-5pm
  • Saturday & Sunday 4th/5th October, 11am-5pm
  • Sunday 19th October 11am-5pm
  • And by appointment at other times throughout October (excluding 10th–17th and 22nd–26th October)

If you would like more context to the work in the exhibition prior to coming, please read my previous three blogs: Following Joan… Parts One, Two & Three.