I wish people who claim to really care about historical accuracy would talk about how much we just. Don't. Know. About history. How much we've lost, because of biases around what kind of information could and should be recorded and preserved for future generations.

I'm writing a book set just pre-Regency, and for it I had to research South Asian working class British communities, interracial marriages and Asian sailors' presence in the UK.

You want to guess what wasn't well recorded pre-1800?

Does that mean they didn't exist? Hell no.

Anne Lister's journals were almost burned. How much queer history has been actively destroyed? We'll never know, because it's long gone.

I often think about the Humayun-nama, about a Mughal emperor and a war of succession - a frank, humanising text by his sister that we only know about because a *single damaged copy* was found and archived. One. Copy.

If you care about historical accuracy, you have to care about what isn't there: about power and the ghosts of people long gone, who weren't allowed to leave their footprint on the world. Be gothic, or gtfo.

If you think I'm over-emphasising the role that record keeping play in the formulation of a racist understanding of the past and our present, well: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/17/home-office-destroyed-windrush-landing-cards-says-ex-staffer