Right of Reply

Last week, Natasha Walter criticised the historical focus of so many books by modern novelists. Here the writer Deborah Moggach replies to those remarks

NATASHA WALTER argues that we're suffering from a glut of novels set in the past. I suspect she was speaking as an exhausted Booker judge, and that when she recovers she will realise that novels that plunge us into other centuries are wonderfully enriching for the imagination. After all, how better to discover history than through stories? She herself admits that "what drives the popularity of these books is a desire to experience the past so precisely and unambiguously that it can almost be tasted and smelled". Seems rather a marvellous thing to me, and better than reading a dry old textbook.

Some of our best novelists - Beryl Bainbridge, Penelope Fitzgerald - have been turning to the past, transporting us to turn-of-the-century Russia, or the Crimean War; we've learnt, while being entertained. I had written 12 contemporary novels before leaving Tescos and traffic jams behind and plunging into the past - in my case, 17th-century Holland. What fascinated me was showing that human emotions never change; greed, lust, betrayal - same feelings, different costumes. And yet how those emotions are coloured by profoundly different expectations of marriage, mortality and the fear of an all-seeing, punishing God. To bring these contradictions to life is a great adventure for a novelist and for the reader.

We're not escaping when we read about the past. We're discovering. A civilised society is one that draws and learns from history. There are plenty of contemporary novels around. My moan would be that there are too many stories about, as Natasha describes it, "the struggles that are still going on in women's lives". And, with all this rich choice on offer, who is finding the time to read them all?