If a secret history of books could be written, and the authors private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader! – William Makepeace Thackeray

Man is an historical animal, with a deep sense of his own past; and if he cannot integrate the past by a history explicit and true, he will integrate it by a history implicit and false. – Geoffrey Barraclough, History in a Changing World