Quotation

Most of history is only the tale of the winning side, anyway, and they’ve a motive for painting the other side black. No, the Stewarts weren’t that bad. Take James, for example – old James, who was father to your King James. Most of the books that say he was a bad king and cruel and the rest of it, all that came down from one single account that was written by someone just passing on rumours years after the fact. If you read what was actually written by those who were with James, who saw what he did, they have nothing but good things to say of the man. But historians went with the rumours, and once it’s been written in print, well, it’s taken as gospel, and then it’s a source for the research of future historians, so we keep copying lies and mistakes . . . That’s why I tell my students to always get back to original documents. Don’t trust the books.