Coming good sixty years later
Some sixty years ago I just passed my ‘O’ Level History exam and actually took two attempts to pass English Language (but I did pass English Literature first time which was perhaps a clue). However my English and History teachers would, if they were still alive, be astonished I wrote three historical novels in two years.
However the last one is about a period when I was alive, which I find a little disconcerting. Does this make me history?
I remember asking my daughter what she was studying in history. She said the second World War. I retorted that was not history. That is almost now it is my story.
Yesterday is history, so, sure, you’re book qualifies as an historical novel. Maybe “contemporary history,” if you want to give reader a clue as to timeframe.
There is a convention, which historical novel prizes insist on, (for example, the Walter Scott Prize) that ‘historical’ starts 80 years ago from the present. Don’t know why this is the cut-off point.
I once asked my granddaughter what they were taught at school as history. ‘Oh, Hitler’, she told me. ‘And Joe Stalin’, I asked her. ‘Who?’ was the response.