Katy Dickinson

The Daughter of Time

One of my favorite books is the Richard III mystery by Josephine Tey called The Daughter of Time, 1951. (The title comes from the old proverb that "Truth is the Daughter of Time".) In this excellent story about a detective's search for the truth about England's most famously evil king, the nature of written History is explored:

"'Truth isn't in accounts but in account books.'
'A neat phrase,' Grant said, complimentary, 'Does it mean anything?'
'It means everything. The real history is written in forms not meant as history. In Wardrobe accounts, in Privy Purse expenses, in personal letters, in estate books. If someone say, insists that Lady Whoosit never had a child, and you find in the account account book the entry: 'For the son born to my lady on Michaelmas eve: five yards of blue ribbon, fourpence halfpenny" it's a reasonably fair deduction that my lady had a son on Michaelmas eve.'" Chapter 8

I think I first started a life-long hunt for artefacts and records that contradict Accepted Truth after I visited Olympia, Greece in 1979. In the museum were many empty pedestals, all that was left of tributes to the athletes who were winners in the ancient Olympic competitions. I was surprised to read on one of the classical marble pedestals an inscription honoring a woman (of Sparta, as I recall) who had won three Olympic chariot races. In 1979, I had just been graduated from the University of California where I had taken quite a few Classics courses. However, until I read that inscription, I did not know that women had ever competed in the Classical Greek Olympics.

Since that revelation, I have found other sources indicating that women did indeed compete in the ancient Olympics; however, this is still neither Common Knowledge nor Accepted Truth. For example, the current Wikipedia entry on the Olympics says simply (and wrongly):

"Paris [in 1900] was also the first Olympic Games where women were allowed to compete."

In The Daughter of Time, hunting for the Truth becomes a passion and enduring detection game for the characters. I recommend both the book and the game.

Posted at 03:01PM Jan 28, 2008 by katysblog in News & Reviews  |