Colm O'Regan: Historical fiction requires lots of exposition but it's not always accurate

Colm O'Regan: "Is there nothing more pleasurable in a book than when the weary, hungry traveller receives good hospitality?"

Dammit, Ken Follett. I wish I knew how to quit you. Actually, I don’t. I’ll take all of that you got.

And by that, I mean his historical novels set around the fictitious town of Kingsbridge in England. I’m about 5,000 pages in between trilogy and prequel. Ranging from Saxon times right up until the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

It’s all English history. But it’s a good way to find out about the history of England.

We can moan all we want about how they were never taught about Ireland in school, but we weren’t really taught about England either, apart from What They Done To Us.

The true Patriot understands the motives of The Enemy. If that means reading about medieval riding, then so be it.

But that’s not the main selling point for me, a red-blooded male. It’s other stuff. Like competence.

In a lot of the books, there is one extremely handy man who was good at most things. Like selecting the right type of stick, fashioning it with their time-specific implement into a handy yoke. It’s well-researched, historically accurate competence.

Sir MacGyver with better character development.

Then, there is the escaping into the forest. A bad thing has happened; the hero needs to get away; they need to cross open ground before they can finally flop down exhausted in the safety of the trees. Drones have ruined forests as escapes; everything can be seen.

Historical fiction, of course, requires lots of exposition. What are they wearing? Why did that thing happen? Because History. The hero gets dressed, putting on “a rough pair of breeches, made of local sheep’s wool and a medieval type jumper”.

I’m being facetious, of course. Those are not exact quotes.

A master like Ken Follett hides it more gracefully than that, but it’s just a necessary evil of historical fiction.

But I’m at that age now, where I want to know all that history anyway; otherwise it doesn’t make sense why Eodren has cleaved the head of Osiric from his shoulders.

And anyway, even if Ken Follett got extremely silly with his historical exposition, he would never match the kind of stuff that I saw in the Odyssey film, where characters say Very Historical Things at odd times.

Such as Helen whispering to Telemachus, “Sorry about the whole Troy thing”, or Odysseus saying, “We are at the end of the Bronze Age, now is the age of Iron.” Thanks for the info, Odysseus.

I find the books good for my attitude to bad things happening. The hero will carve out a life and then look to the hills, and there will be the ominous sign of bandits/Vikings/The Spanish and everything/everyone will be burnt/pillaged/kidnapped/slaughtered. And they will start life again.

That’s great for when you’re fretting about your washing machine, tumble dryer, and dishwasher being the same age and one of them has started to give. It’s good to see that people start again and move on.

The other thing I love is plenty of instances where someone has travelled for a long time; they arrive at an Inn or some sort of lodgings and get a hearty meal.

Is there nothing more pleasurable in a book than when the weary, hungry traveller receives good hospitality? I think it speaks to that primordial impetus to hurl the suitcase to one side when you first arrive in the hotel room and a horse into the hairdresser’s biscuits next to the upside-down mugs.

And you come away with skills in the area. Things like medieval church building or guessing who the bad guy is. The bad guys are truly very bad indeed. But eventually they get their comeuppance. Which makes for a great read.

Even if, as the modern world tells us, it’s not always historically accurate.