Retaining the past: Writer of fiction or historian?

Retaining the Past is a practice-based research project comprising a creative artefact, ‘The Clarity of Hindsight’, and an accompanying exegesis. The artefact aims to provide an authentic account of the social conditions of life in the late eighteenth century around provincial Oxfordshire, unfashionable Southwark and remote Cornwall. These accounts are based on sound historical research told not by way of conventional historical writing but via fictionalised, albeit ‘true-to-life’, stories of the lived experiences of the characters. ‘The Clarity of Hindsight’ demonstrates that sound historical research can be told imaginatively and legitimately as story, and the exegesis is my defence of that statement. The exegesis validates the artefact through two inter-related steps: an exploration of the creative mechanisms of the artefact itself and an overview of the landscape of historical fiction. It identifies the dangers and challenges of doing history through story, and offers some thoughts for potential future research.