Changing History

It was lovely to meet Dr Charlotte Purkis last week.  Charlotte has been one of the instrumental people during my search for Miss Mawer and I am very grateful to her.  At the moment, I am near Cambridge, so Charlotte and I met for lunch at my very old stomping ground, a pub called the Free Press – a most adequate co-incidence as I showed Charlotte my trial copy of Irene Mawer: the Press Archives.

Charlotte has never let me off the hook where inaccuracies are concerned, and during our conversation she gave me many more valid points to think about.  One comment in particular gave me a big shock and it concerned the cover of the Press Archives, specifically the photo.  I mentioned to Charlotte that I had ‘doctored’ the photo as the original shows Miss Mawer wearing a hat with what seem to be ‘antlers’ on it.  I personally thought this made her look silly, so I edited them out.  Charlotte pointed out to me that I had changed the accuracy of a historical record.  I was horrified.  I had never considered this before.

In my writing, I have striven for the exact truth, each detail is as perfect as I can make it, so to realise that I had not followed my own rules was a shock.  I simply hadn’t considered it from that angle before.

Suffice to say, I will be using the correct photo, including the antlers, in future.