"Books and Basic History" Topic

The miniatures connection is slight--you could probably use the book for an RPG campaign--but I feel the need to vent. Currently reading Jack Murray, The Chessboard Murders set in 1920. In one chapter a character asks whether there might be "a fifth column"--the character's words--in Britain. Later, a strange event activates the "spider sense" of another character.
1) Is there anyone on TMP who wouldn't have been jarred out of period by either of those?
2) Is there some reason why we don't put authors and editors in the stocks these days?

First place will always belong to the Regency in which the heroine pulls a revolver out of her boyfriend's saddle bags, but surely this book deserves at least a (dis)honorable mention?

Thanks for listening.

Your outrage is entirely justified, those are horrendous howlers.

The Horror!

I propose we ban Shakespeare for similar offences (they're called "anachronisms").

The Mechanical Clock in 'Julius Caesar' is an outrage!!
In Act 2, Scene 1, Cassius notes that "The clock hath stricken three". Mechanical striking clocks were not invented until more than 1,500 years after Caesar's death.

Or, just maybe, we could lighten up a tad?

Naw, I can cut Shakespeare some slack but no one with access to that source of all knowledge, the Internet.

The absolute master – Patrick O'Brian – refers to "Spanish Influenza" in "Post Captain".

Stephen Maturin diagnoses an illness as "Spanish influenza". While the word influenza was in use during the era, the specific term "Spanish influenza" or "Spanish flu" did not emerge until the 1918–1919 pandemic. O'Brian should be keelhauled…or not.

Historical fiction is hard. Be thankful if it mostly works.

You want a more recent example?

"All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr. This novel is a master piece.

But, he uses modern American idioms and phrasing anachronistically. Burn the book!!

Despite meticulously researching WWII-era radio technology and Nazi cadet schools, Doerr puts "Yankee utterances" into the mouths of occupied French citizens and German youth. Characters occasionally use Americanized phrases like "Werner, you shouldn't think big" etc.

Strict historical purists can have fun pointing these type of things out & I'm certainly not against fun. But there are far more important criteria for judging literature.

"Fifth column"— meh, I'll give him a pass; the origin of the phrase isn't common knowledge, and I've seen it often used in non-fiction works to describe internal factions or resistance in history long preceding Franco and having nothing to do with Spain. If it walks like a duck…

"Spider sense" — bring out the gibbet! That should only be used in modern settings after its appearance, though again a historian might use it in a "lay person" article just as a colloquialism to describe a person particularly adept (or lucky) at avoiding danger. In a pre-1960s novel? Never!

Yes, I too find that annoying. Same thing when they use modern language or slang in books or movies.

"Spider sense".

My Oxford English Dictionary records the earliest known written record of "spider sense" comes from a March 1914 edition of The Times of London.

At the time, the phrase was used literally by a medical doctor to describe an instinctive, creeping dread or awareness that some people felt when a spider was in the room, even if they couldn't see it.

So, there you go. Put back the gibbet.

Technological howlers aside I think we should allow our historical fiction figures a little slack. Translators of fiction routinely have to search for idioms in the destination language which reflect the mood, temperament and cultural references of the original.
Language is such a nuanced medium; I recall being disappointed when trying to read a Cadfael novel because the main character didn't have a Welsh voice when speaking.

Excellent point on spider sense Ochoin! We will put the gibbet away for now.

I agree that Shakespeare--and Marlowe, come to that--were working in an era with a very different understanding of historical development, and far fewer resources. But "fifth column" like "Spanish influenza" is exactly the sort of thing one pays editors for. One person missing something like that is a bad day, which we all have. A published book like that means probably three people who should know better missed it, which is systemic. I'll admit to being especially upset over fifth column because of the Interwar setting of the book, and the political emphasis of the series. This one's got Cheka agents wandering around the UK and S.I.S. agents in Soviet prisons. It would almost take conscious effort to study European espionage and great power rivalry between the wars and not be aware of the origin of the term, leading me to the suspicion that the author hasn't studied.

May I recommend for contrast Georgette Heyer, who used to buy Regency era manuscript diaries and correspondence at auction to get period language right? Somewhere in the discussion of The Spanish Bride there was a comment that she had read every memoir written by a member of the Light Division. She shows it off a little, but it's worth a little showing off.

Translation is another matter--especially out of English. I once read a Dutch translator complaining that there was hardly a single synonym in English: "the language is filled with words which mean almost but not quite the same thing."

For actual voice, I can't speak for other people, but when I hear a good performance on radio, televison or film, I usually discover that in subsequent readings I hear the voice of the actor--even in passages which didn't get filmed. When I reread Sutcliff's "Eagle of the Ninth" for instance, Uncle Aquila is always the voice of Donald Sutherland. (Sherlock Holmes waivers a bit between Jeremy Brett and Basil Rathbone, with just a flavoring of Clive Merrison.)

+1 RittervonBeck.

You raise a fair point. Absolute linguistic authenticity in historical fiction is probably impossible anyway — if characters actually spoke as their contemporaries did, most readers would give up after three pages.

What matters more is capturing the flavour of a culture and people without making it unreadable. A good writer or translator aims for emotional authenticity rather than literal reconstruction.

Your Cadfael example is a good one. Brother Cadfael is deeply Welsh in outlook, humour and temperament, so when he speaks in perfectly neutral modern English it can feel slightly dislocating — as though a vital layer of character has been sanded away.

It's a delicate balance between accessibility and atmosphere, and every reader's tolerance for "period voice" differs.

My AIs assure me they can usually detect verbal anachronisms. But characters from past ages who think like moderns is often too subtle or them to catch.