Historical Integrity in Creative Nonfiction
by SC Skillman
Our purpose in writing nonfiction with a historical element is to inform and to entertain our target audience. That delicate balance is the challenge of creative nonfiction. How do we ensure that when we share colorful stories from the past we still apply the highest standards of accuracy available to us? This was the balance I aimed for after I had researched and photographed forty locations for my book ‘Paranormal Gloucestershire.’
As I hunted down the poignant, tragic, and sometimes violent stories which cluster around these historical sites, I applied four levels of checking. Firstly, having researched the information already out there online, I visited each site, took photos, joined the history tour if one was available, and listened carefully to the stories. On my return home, I recorded them in my first draft, choosing the best to form a direct quote.
My second stage was to revisit and focus upon the particular areas of the site associated with the most compelling stories, so I could ask more targeted questions, learn more details if needed, and explore my own feelings and observations; I incorporated these into my next draft.
In the case of historical facts, my third stage was to meticulously check the known facts in websites, books, local archives, journals, or documentaries. Often the site will have its own handbook which I can consult, as in the case of Tewkesbury Abbey. In the case of the phantom observed by former and present pupils at Powell’s School in Cirencester, I followed up local newspaper reports to clarify the historical roots of the story.
My fourth level of checking is when I send out an extract of my final draft to the archivist, owner, or historian of each location, asking them to check they are happy with what I have written, and to let me have any suggested amendments. This way, I obtained additional, personal testimonies from Mr Michael Berkeley of Berkeley Castle, and Don Macer-Wright whose family own Dean Hall, Littledean, and who discovered and gathered a team to excavate the Roman Temple remains in the hall grounds.
As Lucy Worsley has said, ‘history is ambivalent,’ chronicled by flawed human witnesses, and may itself be false or misleading. We cannot even consider the archival record to be 100% trustworthy; after all, the original writer of the document may be expressing a fallible point of view or a deliberate intention to deceive. I acknowledge the possibility that oft-repeated ‘historical’ tales are apocryphal - spread as propaganda by those who seek to promote their own interests. As author and historian Ian Mortimer says, ‘How do you know what you think you know?’ He points out that we take a piece of evidence, which we either accept or not. ‘If lots of people say something happened and they all have the same source, how do they know the source is right?’
Certain dramatic stories are highly contentious, such as the tale of King Edward II and his grisly murder courtesy of a red-hot poker at Berkeley Castle in 1327 (a story which first emerged in the chronicle of the king from 1333 on). In my final draft I ensure that the reader is aware of ongoing research around this tale, competing claims by historians, current thinking about its authenticity, and alternative theories for Edward’s true fate. Ian Mortimer, for instance, believes Edward escaped from Berkeley Castle, and spent fifteen years on the Continent during which he was in touch with his son Edward III, who, he says, is known to have paid money for his father’s safe custody abroad up to 1340. Mortimer further claims that Edward II actually died in 1342 when his son arranged for the secret return of his body to England and its installation in the splendid tomb in Gloucester Cathedral, replacing the ‘fake’ body that had previously occupied it.
When it comes to the reliance we can place on the authenticity of the stories, of course, we are always up against the element of: ‘Did the person who told me the story stand to gain from it?’ George Lowsley-Williams of Chavenage House announced during his highly entertaining tour, ‘We encourage ghosts here! They’re good for business!’ The sheer transparency and humor of that admission did tend to make me trust the stories he recalled from his childhood. He and his sister Caroline gave us such a great welcome and enjoyable tour I quoted them directly throughout my chapter on their manor house (and returned to Chavenage a second time to do it all over again, when George told me extra stories). I also give due credit to different independent accounts by visitors, and not only to George’s childhood experiences but also Caroline’s corroboration of those events by reference to another witness.
As I progressed through my drafts, I strove to be true to my own first impressions and instincts about the place; this was especially so in the case of The Ancient Ram, Wotton-under-Edge when I offered my own responses to the various rooms of this ancient inn, even if they were in contradiction to the experiences I quote from other visitors.
To me, in researching tales of the paranormal, the authenticity rises from the cumulative effect of so many testimonies over a period of decades and sometimes centuries in the same place. This certainly applies to the village of Prestbury; the histories of Dean Hall in Littledean and of Slowwe House, Arlingham; and the frequent sightings of the ‘Woman in Black’ at St Anne’s House on the corner of Pittville Circus Road and All Saints Road in Cheltenham. At the end of my nonfiction books, I list every source in my Acknowledgements, along with the books and articles I have referred to in my Bibliography.
It seems to me that the English Civil War is responsible for a considerable proportion of haunting stories: unsurprising, since it was such a traumatic time for so many at all levels of British society. In fact, often now when I read about the worst conflicts in the world today, I remind myself that during the years 1642 to 1651 we too experienced the same cruelty, fanaticism, and inhumanity, with family members and former allies set against one another, brutal retribution, and countless personal tragedies which seem to have imprinted their energy into the fabric of many places we can visit today.
For all writers who seek to engage their audience with historical characters and stories, our purpose above all is to arouse the empathy of the reader for those past players who strutted and fretted their hour upon the stage. Not simply our dry intellectual knowledge of these individuals, events and circumstances, but our emotional engagement through the craft of the skilled writer, is what feeds our abilities to remember and our instinct to respond with compassion, thus giving us a richer connection with living history, and with our own humanity.
SC Skillman lives in Warwickshire, a county in central England, just south of Birmingham. Her first job was as a production secretary with the BBC. Later she lived for five years in Australia before returning to live and work in England. Her published output includes two novels Mystical Circles and A Passionate Spirit, and four highly illustrated nonfiction books Paranormal Warwickshire, Illustrated Tales of Warwickshire, A-Z of Warwick and Paranormal Gloucestershire.