History has a considerable advantage over the present.

It has an editor.

By the time we read about Henry VIII, Napoleon, George III or any of the other assorted kings, emperors, presidents and lunatics who have wandered across the world's stage, somebody has tidied everything up.

Dates have been checked. Battles have been named. Motives have been assigned. Historians have decided who was brilliant, who was incompetent and who was simply having a particularly bad Tuesday.

Living through history is rather different.

Nobody tells you which bits are important.

You wake up in the morning, make a cup of coffee, turn on the news and discover that somebody somewhere has apparently decided to reorganise the world before breakfast.

Welcome to the Madness of King Trump.

Future historians are going to have a wonderful time with Donald Trump. There will be libraries devoted to him. Academics will spend entire careers arguing over what he meant, why he did it and whether anybody actually knew what was going on at the time.

Those of us who were here will be able to help.

No.

We didn't.

That's the peculiar thing about history. When I write historical fiction, I know what happens next.

My characters don't.

I can put someone in London in May 1940 and know that Britain will survive. I can write about someone hearing the news from Dunkirk while knowing what Dunkirk will eventually come to represent.

The poor devil I'm writing about has no such luxury.

For him, tomorrow hasn't been written.

And suddenly, looking at today's world, I understand my characters rather better.

We don't know what tomorrow's chapter contains either.

Perhaps that's why the modern news sometimes feels less like journalism and more like the first draft of a historical novel written by someone who has consumed too much coffee.

"That's ridiculous," the editor would say.

"It happened," replies the author.

"Nobody will believe it."

"I have photographs."

"Take it out anyway."

History has always been like this.

We just forget because historians have cleaned it up for us.

Kings married six wives. Emperors invaded Russia in winter. Nations went to war over buckets, borders, insults and occasionally football matches. Governments collapsed because somebody forgot to count properly.

Human civilisation is essentially several thousand years of people doing things that would be rejected from a novel for being implausible.

Donald Trump is merely unfortunate enough to be doing his bit while everybody owns a smartphone.

Perhaps in two hundred years somebody will write a historical novel set in our time.

The author will carefully research the clothes we wore, the cars we drove and the strange little rectangles we carried everywhere and stared at while walking into lampposts.

Then the editor will reach the political chapters.

"This Trump character."

"Yes?"

"Tone him down."

"But that's what he was like."

"Nobody's going to believe him."

And somewhere, the ghost of a historical novelist will smile.

Because we know.

History doesn't have to make sense.

It just has to happen.

 Copyright © Tom Kane 2026