Rich as Fiction?

I was stung by something I read recently on the dust-jacket of a work of popular history. The reviewer declared as a form of high praise that the book was “as richly detailed as a work of fiction”. This took me very much by surprise. What does it tell us about how history-writing is perceived? First, that it is not richly detailed compared to fiction, and second, that it is less interesting or less readable than fiction. For a work of history to be interesting, stimulating and readable is unusual; it brings it closer to the field of entertainment, and thus fiction.

Yet axiomatically, truth is stranger than fiction. Truth is certainly more interesting than fiction. Unfortunately I have a kind face and attract real-life confidences from strangers in public places. Recently in a fast-food restaurant a woman told me about her daughter’s trip to the hairdresser, during which the stylist cut his hand and proceeded quite casually to bleed all over her specially-created 1920s hairdo,…