Writing & Notes

Memorising history is actually quite easy.

You learn a date.

You learn a name.

You repeat it in the exam.

Writing history is harder.

Because the moment you try to explain something, you realise how many questions you don’t have answers to.

When I started writing, I thought the difficult part would be remembering facts.

It wasn’t.

The difficult part was deciding:

• What do I explain?
  
  

• What do I leave out?
  
  

• What do I say when historians don’t agree?
  
  

Sometimes the most honest sentence is,

“We don’t know.”

And that sentence is surprisingly hard to write.

Writing history also forces you to think about who you’re writing for.

If you’re writing for children, you can’t hide behind complicated words.

If something doesn’t make sense, it shows.

What I’ve learned is that history isn’t about sounding confident.

It’s about being clear, curious, and honest about what we know—and what we’re still figuring out.

That’s harder than memorising.

But it’s also much more interesting.