The Daughter of Time

"One of my all-time favorites—an absolute classic!"

"Josephine Tey’s classic "

"Over all, this book would have been much better of a read for me had I been more familiar with British history. My overall takeaway was to reiterate and gain a stronger perspective on how to read history in the future—with a grain of salt, being highly aware of biases. <br/><br/>Cool quotes:<br/><br/>"But on the whole, Grant thought, she had made a good enough job of the story, judging by what he had read of it. He might even go back sometime and read the bits he had skipped" (p. 79).<br/><br/>***<br/><br/>"'. . . . The point is that EVERY SINGLE MAN who was there knows that the story is nonsense, and yet it has never been contradicted. It will never be overtaken now. It is a completely untrue story grown to legend while the men who knew it to be untrue looked on and said nothing.'<br/><br/>'Yes. That's very interesting; very. History as it is made.' <br/><br/>'Yes. History.' <br/><br/>'Give me research. After all, the truth of anything at all doesn't lie in someone's account of it. It lies in the small facts of the time. An advertisement in a paper. The sale of a house. The price of a ring'" (p. 104-105).<br/><br/>***<br/><br/>"'Look, Mr. Grant, let's you and I start at the very beginning of this thing. Without history books, or modern versions, or anyone's opinion about anything. Truth isn't in accounts but in account books.' <br/><br/>'A neat phrase,' Grant said, complimentary. 'Does it mean anything?' <br/><br/>'It means everything. The real history is written in forms not meant as history. In Wardrobe accounts, in Privy Purse expenses, in personal letters, in estate books. . .'" (p. 105-106).<br/><br/>***<br/><br/>"In the end he withdrew his attention altogether from the problem. Which was his habit when a conundrum prove too round and smooth and solid for immediate solution. If he slept on the proposition it might, tomorrow, show a facet that he had missed" (p. 108).<br/><br/>***<br/><br/>"He wanted to say: 'But you of all people should be interested in what can happen to royalty; in the frailness of your reputation's worth. Tomorrow a whisper may destroy you.' But he was already guiltily conscious that to hinder a Matron with irrelevances was to lengthen her already lengthy morning round without reason or excuse" (p. 111).<br/><br/>***<br/><br/>"'You don't need to worry about it,' she said, soothing. 'There'll be some quite simple explanation that you haven't thought of. It'll come to you sometime when you're thinking of something else altogether. That's usually how I remember where something I've mislaid is. I'll be putting the kettle on in the pantry, or counting the sterile dressings as Sister doles them out, and suddenly I'll think: 'Goodness, I left it in my Burberry pocket.' Whatever the thing was, I mean. So you don't have to worry about it'" (p. 113).<br/><br/>***<br/><br/>". . . . 'And of course a fighting man has a better chance with troops than a man who writes books'" (p. 120).<br/><br/>***<br/><br/>"Well, if the world in general went on its humming way, brisk and uncaring, at least he had young America on his side" (p. 135)"

"This was required reading in my college history program, and taught me that the detective and the historian go hand in hand. "