Introduction: In the Place of a Hero

Abstract

Today (whichever today we are in) we are empty of heroes and skeptical of the very idea. Yesterday (recent or ancient yesterday) we discerned heroes, and our worshipful admiration was their reward; and ours. This sense of loss is the condition of modernity, and “modernity” goes back to forever.

The leading characters of romances … are usually 99% compounded of artifice — an assembly of heroic virtues and physical attributes based more on legends, poetry, other novels than on real men and women. Heroic characters, therefore, may be assembled from reading. But real characters — there is a different thing. If we are writers, we must all mix with people — on the street, in the bus, at work, in sport, on holiday … For there is no crash laboratory course on people. Understanding of humankind is something that must be accumulated and stored as life goes on.

Dorothy Dunnett¹