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  • source= ESSAYS IN ENGLISH HISTORY  (by A.J.P.TAYLOR, 1977):

    Chapter One—Fiction in History: In most European languages “story” and “history” are the same word.

    The past, or more precisely the past of literate mankind, is our raw material. In this past events succeed each other in order of time. This awareness of time came quite late in man’s consciousness. Some civilizations do not have it… We cannot change the order of time unless of course we or our sources have made a mistake, which is by no means unknown. We cannot have the events other than they are.

    History is not just a catalogue of events put in the right order like a railway timetable. History is a version of events. Between the events and the historian there is a constant interplay. The historian tries to impose on events some kind of rational pattern: how they happened and even why they happened. No historian starts with a blank mind as a jury is supposed to do. He does not go to the documents or archives with a childlike innocence of mind and wait patiently until they dictate conclusions to him. Quite the contrary.

    When an historian is working on his subject, the events or statistical data or whatever he is using change under his hand all the time and his ideas about these events change with them. He upgrades some of the evidence and downgrades other parts according to the changes of his outlook.

    Sometimes he puts an unwelcomed piece of evidence at the bottom of the pile.