About History Just Got Interesting
When I began writing Time Band, I focused on making the series of novels as historically accurate as I could. The time travel aspect of the books was only ever going to act as a plot device to write about the past and give my thoughts on a possible future, but I was determined to make the historical aspects as factually correct as I could.
This need for historical accuracy led to painstaking research, which in turn has spawned a series of non-fiction books and even two online courses. I reasoned that if I was able to create high-quality non-fiction products from my research, it would stand me in good stead for the task of ensuring my fiction was historically sound.
However, the accurate portrayal of history was not my only objective when I first came up with the concept of Time Band …
Growing up, my two favourite subjects at school were History and English Literature and as a young adult my favourite author was George MacDonald Fraser, who wrote the wonderful Flashman Papers—a series of historical fiction novels set throughout the Victorian era.
As well as being well-written and entertaining books, I also found the Flashman Papers to be extremely informative; Fraser providing the reader with pages of notes and appendices at the end of each volume, which allowed for reading around the historical events covered within the books.
I have often wondered why schools do not include the Flashman Papers as a part of the curriculum; not necessarily within the English Literature syllabus, but rather as extra reading material during History lessons. Perhaps Fraser’s bawdy content may not be considered by some schools as suitable for young teenagers, but even so I have always thought this to be a missed opportunity—in short, George MacDonald Fraser made learning history so much fun!
It is this idea of making history fun and accessible, which is the other objective behind not only the Time Band series of Historical Fiction Novels, but also the History Just Got Interesting website; where you can delve a little deeper into the history covered in the novel, by reading the accompanying non-fiction books, or by testing your knowledge of that particular topic through quizzes, puzzles and educational resources or by taking the corresponding online course.
Then there is my own take on Fraser’s notes and appendices: The History Section of the website is a modern day equivalent, where you can read more about a particular topic mentioned in one of the novels, and which is tagged according to the Book and Chapter where the topic can be found.
And finally, let’s not forget about the Merch—for those fans of Tara Tempus and co, who want to show their support for the Time School team 😜
I hope you will find the History Just Got Interesting website both an informative and enjoyable resource.
All the best,
David
