After reading Josephine Tey’s Daughter of Time, I now realize how important primary sources are to a historian, more general history itself.  The book starts out with Alan Grant, a policeman, staring at a ceiling, in bed, in a hospital.  There is only so much the mind can create with just a blank ceiling.  After months of refusing to read books, his friend Marta brings him a stack of portraits of prominent figure in past centuries.  He goes through several of these portraits until he comes across the portrait of Richard III.  For some reason the facial expressions and other aspects of this portrait cannot leave Grant’s thoughts.  He eagerly decides to learn more about Richard III and the infamous accusations of the murderer of his two nephews.

Throughout the book, Tey establishes the importance of primary sources.  Although school textbooks, well known authors such as Sir Thomas More, say one thing, the facts may not be factual.  It puzzles me how such thing could be possible.  Only declaring history a few weeks back, I still have a lot to learn.  I was one who depended on text books and online websites (not Wikipedia as taught in grade school), not utilizing the primary sources that are available at public libraries, churches, government buildings, etc.

This book and the understanding of primary sources has definitely overlapped with my work in the archives.  It has given me a greater reason to believe in the importance for researching primary sources.  Although it may be difficult to piece together because there are so many articles and separate pieces, it is important for a true historian to be able to piece the information together.  One must not always depend on the information readily available and already pieced together because, like Tey depicted in The Daughter or Time, not all common knowledge is reliable.