What’s the attraction of reading (and writing) fiction set in the past?
Why should anyone want to know what happened, or might have happened, before they were even born? Let alone meet reimagined versions of people who actually existed? Or, on the other hand, who never existed, even if they lived in places we can still visit today?
Maybe it’s because, as human beings, we can observe that although down the ages technology, manners and traditions are subject to change, human nature seems to remain basically unalterable, and standards of good behaviour tend to stay the same?
Those Biblical Ten Commandments, for example
