History of Wigan   (Help with ancient and recent history.)

I recall seeing Dan Snow on a TV program defending Historians making up stuff!

Certainly if you go back to ancient history, they would have perceived their role as involving such.

Roman Historians took their cue from the Greek tradition, and history was considered a close relative of poetry: to aggrandise and big up the attainments of their emperor/ culture etc.

At school, my history teacher tried to tell me that The Earl of Derby did not want The Liverpool and Manchester Railway on his land. So I produced the documentation to show that was untrue.

He said, "You know that, and now I know that, but the person who will mark your exam paper does not know that. You've got to choose between being right, or passing the damned exam"!

(Earl of Derby DID NOT WANT TO SELL his land, which is rather different. He was angling for the arrangement of the railway paying him a fixed rental for the land they occupied, and also a levy on all the traffic conveyed over his land: a system which had pertained to the Turnpike roads, and contributed to their deterioration. Not an option that appealed to the backers of the L&M Rly.)