In Graham Swift’s Waterland, a young historian absorbed by the history and mystery of the Fens finds himself faced with the question of how history differs from story-telling and legend. Swift's precision as a writer enables him to treat each strand of the question separately and yet do justice to the whole.

King Ludd, the last in Andrew Sinclair's epic trilogy The Albion Triptych, belongs to a different tradition which sees no value in such distinctions. Like Waterland, its central character George Griffin is a Fenland historian, but one whose role in the novel is to deny academic method. 'History,' says Griffin