Remarks

I take as my main text the address given by Theodore Roosevelt, President of the American Historical Association, to the AHA 89 years ago. He saw, and I concur, that biography and history are branches of literature. Roosevelt believed that, while facts were its basis, historical writing had to also draw on the imagination. Indeed, he makes the argument with which I can only concur: 'Unless he (the historian) writes vividly he cannot write truthfully; for no amount of dull, painstaking detail will sum up as the whole truth unless imagination is there to paint the truth'.