Fiction vs History?

[David Gentle]

Isn't there a difference between knowingly constructing propaganda and trying to make the fullest
account of some part of history? An example we're seeing a lot of on UK TV history shows at the
moment seems to be the way that Shakespear deliberately wrote Richard III as Tudor propaganda to
justify Henry VII's "regime change".
Of course the act of framing your history is an act of ommision (no one can encompass everything)
and, presumably, choosing your frame is a creative act, possibly close to the creativity of fiction.
But actual fiction writers are trying to make up stuff that they know is untrue. You could argue, of
course,  that books like Gravity's Rainbow are atttempts to illuminate something true, in which case
surely it's fiction that is history rather than history fiction.

David Gentle