Richard Cohen - Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past

Making History

The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past

Richard Cohen

Grand, Illuminating, and Fun,Jon Meacham

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For Kathy

And in memory of Dom Aelred Watkin, O.S.B., who inspired my love of history and who wrote of one of my essays, What is this farrago of nonsense?

Before you study the history, study the historian.

E. H. CARR, WHAT IS HISTORY? (1961)

Beneath every history, there is another historythere is, at least, the life of the historian.

HILARY MANTEL, THE REITH LECTURES (2017)

COLOR ILLUSTRATIONS

• Herodotus, modern statue in Bodrum, Turkey. (Photo: Robert Morris/Alamy)
• The death of Harold, from the Bayeux Tapestry (detail), 1070s. Muse de la Tapisserie, Bayeux. (Photo: Bridgeman Images)
• The four evangelists, miniature from the Gospel Book of Charlemagne, early ninth century. Cathedral Treasury, Palatine Chapel, Aachen. (Photo: Art Resource, NY)
• The execution of tienne Marcel at the gates of Paris, miniature from Jean Froissart, Chronicles, fifteenth century. (Photo: Bibliothque Nationale de France, Paris, MS Franais 2643, fol. 230)
• Poster for an American production of William Shakespeares Richard III, 1884. (Photo: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC)
• (top) Voltaire, circa 1736, by Maurice-Quentin de La Tour. Chteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, Versailles. (Photo: Grard Blot RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY)
• (bottom) Gabrielle milie de Breteuil, Marquise of Chtelet-Lorraine, circa 1736, by Maurice-Quentin de La Tour. Private collection. (Photo: Bridgeman Images)
• Edward Gibbon, circa 1779, by Joshua Reynolds. Private collection. (Photo: Bridgeman Images)
• Walter Scott, 1831, by Francis Grant. National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh. (Photo: Bridgeman Images)

• (top) Napolon Dictating to Count Las Cases the Account of his Campaigns, 1892, by William Quiller Orchardson. Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool. (Photo: Bridgeman Images)
• (bottom) Ibn Khalduns portrait on a ten-dinar banknote, issued Tunisia, 1994.
• War News from Mexico, 1848, by Richard Caton Woodville. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville. (Photo: Granger/Alamy)
• Frederick Douglass, circa 1855, daguerreotype by an unknown artist. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Rubel Collection, Gift of William Rubel, 2001 (Acc no. 2001.756).
• Winston S. Churchill, corrected galley proof from A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Book 2: The Making of a Nation. Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill Papers CHUR 4/403A/79. Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown, London, on behalf of The Estate of Winston S. Churchill and The Sir Winston Churchill Archive Trust. Copyright in the text The Estate of Winston S. Churchill. Copyright in the reproduction The Winston Churchill Archive Trust. (Photo: Reproduced by kind permission of the Master, Fellows and Scholars of Churchill College, Cambridge)
• Angelus Novus, 1920, by Paul Klee. Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Gift of Fania and Gershom Scholem, Jerusalem; John Herring, Marlene and Paul Herring, Jo Carole and Ronald Lauder, New York. (Photo: Bridgeman Images)
• (top) David Starkey, 2019. (Photo: Paul Quezada-Neiman/Alamy)
• (bottom) A.J.P. Taylor, 1976, by Tony Evans. (Photo: Timelapse Library/Getty Images)
• (top) Niall Ferguson, 1993. (Photo: Rex/Shutterstock)
• (bottom) David Olusoga, Mary Beard and Simon Schama, 2018, during the filming of Civilisations. (Photo: BBC Photo Library)
• (top) Ken Burns promoting his documentary series The War, 2007. (Photo: AP/Shutterstock)
• (bottom) Henry Louis Gates. (Photo: Rick Friedman/Getty Images)

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

• Background: The Assassination of Caesar, eighteenth century, by Mariano Rossi. (Photo: Sothebys, NY). Vignettes (left to right): Tacitus, statue, 1883, Austrian Parliament Building, Vienna (photo: ImageBroker/Alamy); Ulysses S. Grant, 1864 (photo: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC); Hilary Mantel, 2005 (photo: Rex/Shutterstock); Mary Beard, 1978 (photo: Diana Bonakis Webster); Eric Hobsbawm, 1976 (photo: Wesley/Keystsone/Getty Images); Shelby Foote and Ken Burns, 1990 (photo: Everett Collection/Alamy)
• Dom David Knowles, 1965, by Walter Bird. (Photo: National Portrait Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY)
• Downside Abbey and School, 1920s postcard. (Photo: private collection)
• Homer, 1814, by Jean-Baptiste Auguste Leloir. Muse du Louvre, Paris. (Photo: Heritage Images/Alamy)
• Map of the world as Herodotus saw it, from James Rennell, The Geographical System of Herodotus, 1800. (Photo: The Wellcome Library)
• Map of the siege of Syracuse, from Eight Books of the Peloponnesian Warre written by Thucydides, ed. Thomas Hobbes, 1629
• Romulus, Remus and the Wolf, eleventh-century statue with fifteenth-century additions. Musei Capitolini, Rome. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Jastrow)
• Josephus Released by Vespasian, 1704, by Jan Luyken. (Photo: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
• Tacitus, statue, 1883, Austrian Parliament Museum, Vienna. (Photo: ImageBroker/Alamy)
• Title page of Plutarchs Lives, 1727, ed. M. Dacier
• St. Luke Writing in Crown, 1521, by Simon Bening. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of A. Augustus Healy, 11.504)
• Map showing Muslim expansion 2021 by Mapping Specialists, Ltd.
• Arab storyteller, miniature from Al-Hariri, Maqamat, 1237. (Photo: Bibliothque Nationale de France, Paris, MS Arabe 5847, fol. 131v)
• Arab storyteller, circa 1925, postcard. (Photo: private collection)
• Opening of Bede, Historia eccl. Gentis Anglorum, Book 1, circa 850900. British Library, London, Cotton Tiberius C. II, fol. 5v. (Photo: British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images)
• The town band of Cremona riding on an elephant, miniature from Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora II, thirteenth century. (Photo: The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 016 II, fol. 152v)
• The Death of Roland, miniature by Jean Fouquet from the Grandes Chroniques de France, circa 145560. (Photo: Bibliothque Nationale de France, Paris, MS Franais 6465, fol. 113)
• Froissart at work, detail from a miniature of the Battle of Stirling, from Jean Froissart, Chronicles, circa 147080. (Photo: Bibliothque Nationale de France, Paris, MS Franais 86, fol. 11)
• Niccol Machiavelli, illustration from N. Machiavelli, Il principe Con la prefazione e le note istoriche e politiche di Mr. Amelot de la Houssaye, 1769. (Photo: Peace Palace Library, The Hague)
• Portrait of a gentleman, purported to show Valentino (Cesare Borgia), circa 1513, by Altobello Melone. Galleria dellAccademia Carrara, Bergamo. (Photo: Leemage/Getty Images)