How does a writer approach the past? This is a question I've been asking myself a good deal recently. The new book I'm working on takes as its material both the recent past, events which are reference points in my own memory, and the further-off past, which I haven't experienced first-hand at all. Nearly all novels are in some sense historical, though they may not be labelled that way. Since stories deal with cause and effect, with the development of events, you are forced back into at least...