Bede’s Ecclesiastical History Of the English People #amreading

I have been re-reading Bede’s Ecclesiastical History Of the English People ~ it gives me a bit of a break from proof-reading book 2 of The Du Lac Chronicles. And I thought I would share my favourite passage with you.

“The present life of man upon earth, O King, seems to me, in
comparison to that time which is unknown to us, like the swift flight of a sparrow through the room where you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, with a good fire in the midst, while the storms of rain and snow rage outside. The sparrow, I say,

flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, while he is inside, is safe from the wintery storm; but after a short space of shelter, he immediately vanishes out of sight, into the dark winter from which he emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant.”

I think that is the real challenge of any historical fiction writer ~ we can only hazard a guess of what life must have been like back then. We cannot truly understand it, because we were not there. Still, we all do our best.

If you have never read the works of Bede before, then I strongly recommend that you do. Maybe, just for a moment, you can be that sparrow and fly through his world.

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