IN THE MAGAZINE

This is Ophelia hanging out at the seaside. She likes: walking around outdoors, warm hot-cross buns with butter, the view of London from Hungerford Bridge and the music of Lucinda Williams.

HISTORY ON REPEAT FOREVER AND EVER - PART 1

Ophelia Field Traces Vice's Ancestors

INTERVIEW BY JAMES KNIGHT

Ophelia Field is a young and articulate graduate of Christ Church College, Oxford and the London School of Economics. She knows a lot more than you about the early 18th Century.

When she isn’t acting as an expert consultant to the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, she can be found writing in the Sunday Telegraph and the Times Literary Supplement. She also somehow finds the time to rattle out chunky books on her favourite period of British history, which she says is from 1690 to 1750.

Her 2002 biography of Sarah the Duchess of Marlborough got all the history top brass in a lather and she is set to follow that with a book on a bunch of notable people who formed the “Kit-Cat Club”. Unfortunately this has nothing to do with a people who are really into eating chocolate bars and everything to do with a movement that changed the way in which the power of the printed word was perceived.

As people who believe that printed words still have the power to change the world (or at least your OWN world) ourselves, we reckoned she would be the perfect person to talk to.

This contemporary etching by Hogarth commemorates the South Sea Bubble disaster of 1711. It was kind of like Black Monday, Black Tuesday, Black Wednesday and Black Thursday all rolled into one. Apparently losing all of your cash in early 18th century Britain led to sacrifice, the appearance of the devil and heated card games between knights and wizards. Cool. Courtesy of the collection of Robert Chambers. The Book of Days. www.thebookofdays.com

Vice: Hello Ophelia, how did you get into the whole history game?

Ophelia Field: Firstly, while most would call me a historian, it isn’t a label I use about myself. I think of myself as a writer, whose books so far have happened to be about the past and aim to be thoroughly factual. Though I accept the subjectivity of history, I always like to know whether I’m writing or reading something that is attempting to be empirically true.

The truth is something that, regardless of everything else, I think we look for. Truth and honesty in the face of people’s constant, everyday falsity.

Indeed. You must look for the truth based on primary evidence and divorce that from the opinion of people. I have no problem with today’s blurring of the genres of history, biography and imaginative fiction, so long as the reader remains conscious of the distinctions and doesn’t come away from a novel under the impression that they’ve read a reliable historical account.

So you’re basically saying don’t take The Da Vinci Code or The Passion of the Christ too seriously?

Right. There are too many countries where people today still risk their lives fighting for certain historical facts to be acknowledged and taught in schools to start confusing fact with fiction. We shouldn’t get lazy about it just because we’re lucky enough to live in relatively free societies.

How did you initially become interested in the subject itself?

It was actually the conflicting interpretations of history that first attracted me to it at school. I had good teachers, who always made it clear there were at least five sides to any historical story and that we ourselves could come up with a sixth interpretation with a little bit of effort. I actually had another career (as a refugee advocate) for almost a decade before I returned to my enthusiasm for history.


TO BE CONTINUED
HISTORY ON REPEAT FOREVER AND EVER | 1 | 2 |

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Comments

Anonymous, on Mar 20, 2009 wrote: Glad i’m not the only fan of the c18th on the internet. Whaterver Ugh thinks, i’ll probably look this book up.