The historian as storyteller.

In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/h/herodotus.html#3It7xpozRKGKFgI8.99

Above is a great, thought provoking quote from Herodotus. It is one amongst many as you will see if you follow the link.  Whatever your opinion of him as a historian Herodotus was a great storyteller. This art, the craft and guile to write interesting, captivating things still must lie at the heart of the historian's arsenal. They, of course, must be empirical in their approach to evidence and how they interpret it. That is the science of history.

The real creativity though may come in the presentation of interpretation. It is no good writing a perfectly accurate but tedious account of your field. Nobody will read it! It is equally unworthy to write an entertaining but inaccurate account.

The balance must be struck between creativity and accuracy. This is where the historian must be a storyteller. In a way this is inevitable. Whatever interpretation of the past a historian constructs and presents is their personal narrative of events. For example, taking the same facts, one historian may present the actions of Richard III as particularly cruel and opine that the evidence favours his murdering the princes in the tower. Yet another historian my analyse the same facts and decide Richard was no worse than other monarchs of the era and that the evidence against him for these murders is, at best, highly circumstantial. It is a this point that having analysed and filtered the same evidence to reach different conclusions that they present their version of events. This is the heart of their storytelling.

Recreating the past and interpeting the data needs intuition and a mental capacity to connect the gaps in that data. Some might argue that more recent events are better documented and thus less story telling is required. One would contest this as even in daily life we can see different narratives applied to events. You need only look at the front of two daily newpapers, say 'The Guardian' and 'The Telegraph' to see the same story interpreted in completely differing ways.

So to conclude, the historain must be a storyteller if they want to get their ideology and interpretation noticed. If, like Herodotus they want to be long remembered, then they must be a GREAT storyteller!