Hear me out. I haven’t gone completely mad. And I don’t speak to just any dead person in any old place. I’m actually quite selective. In fact, I think, when you hear me out, it might even make sense.
The idea probably began to crystallise when I read The Rising Down by Alexandra Harris. In researching a historic Sussex figure, she described the person, their character, their personality, who they really were, gradually emerging from the gloom of the past. That image stayed with me. I suspect it resonated far more deeply than I realised at the time.
The importance of connections
These days, people seem to talk a great deal about a connection to place. We speak of landscapes that move us, of villages that feel like home, of the importance of belonging somewhere. But we don’t seem to speak nearly as often about our connection to the people who occupied those places before us.
Yet it isn’t a strange idea at all. Watch an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? and you’ll see it happen time and again. Celebrities discover ancestors they never knew, people who lived a century or more ago, whose names they had never heard and whose lives had long since disappeared from family memory. Yet when those lives are uncovered, they are often profoundly moved. They cry. They laugh. They feel pride, sorrow and admiration for people they have never met. They feel a connection.
Why?
Because there is something deeply human in wanting to understand the people who came before us. It’s an innate desire, instinct and need. It gives us a sense of security. We feel anchored. And we are all, in some way, trying to understand ourselves. Where did we come from? Why are we the people we are? Which traits are inherited, which values passed quietly from one generation to the next, and which stories have simply been forgotten? And of course, stories from the past are nearly always compelling.
Knowing something about those who came before us seems to give us a stronger sense of identity. Equally, not knowing can leave a curious and even painful gap, a feeling that part of our own story has gone missing.
But I don’t think this instinct is confined to our own ancestors. Sometimes I find myself wanting to understand people from history who have no connection to me at all. They might be a poet, a soldier, a servant, an explorer or a forgotten villager. They lived, loved, struggled, laughed, grieved and hoped just as we do. Their lives mattered, even if history has largely forgotten them.
So, who, how and where?
So who have I spoken to? Well, William the Conqueror, for one.
At the risk of sounding completely insane, there are places where I feel someone’s presence more strongly than others. Not literally, of course, but because the place still seems to hold something of their story. I didn’t particularly feel William in Caen Castle. Perhaps too many people have walked those stones since he did. But I did feel a sense of him in the cathedral at Caen, standing before his tomb. Admittedly, only a small part of him is actually buried there. Much of his body was lost, scattered or stolen over the centuries. Yet it was there, more than anywhere else, that I felt closest to the man whose footsteps I had been following for over a year.
By then I’d traced his story across Normandy, Sussex, Kent, Hampshire and London. I’d stood where he landed, where he fought, where he ruled and where he was finally laid to rest. So, standing before his tomb, I said hello.
More recently, I’ve spoken to Hilaire Belloc too.
I said hello to him at his mother’s grave in Slindon. I spoke to him at Nore Folly in Slindon, where he spent part of his childhood. I reflected with him at Duncton Hill. Those places mattered to him. In The Four Men: A Farrago he references the importance of places that shape you as boy. For him, that was Slindon. Standing there, walking where he walked, somehow makes him easier to imagine, not as a famous writer, but as that boy, and then as a man trying to make sense of his own life.
I’ve also spoken to my own great-grandmother (Elizabeth) and my great-great-grandfather (Robert) in the church where Elizabeth was married in Icklesham in 1884. In fact, I introduced Robert to his great, great, great granddaughter who was with me. How cool is that? They have met (sort of) over a gap of just over 140 years. And I walked the lane they would have walked. I also spoke to my great-aunt in the church where she married in Slindon over a 100 years ago. Pregnant (her, not me), I tried to imagine how she felt.
Is this just madness or does it matter?
Well, it matters to me. If you can try and imagine what they felt and what they saw, you do start to get a sense of the person. And you feel connected. Years seem to slip away. Empathy and understanding emerge. And of course, they mattered to their families, to their villages, to the people who loved them. Some changed history. Most didn’t. But every one of them changed somebody’s history. It somehow feels important to acknowledge that.
I don’t ask anything of them. I’m not expecting an answer. I simply say, “Hello.” I tell them I’m here. I came. “I remember you. Your life mattered. You made a difference. I’m writing your story down, so perhaps someone else will remember you too”.
So why don’t you try it? Think of someone who interests you, who mattered. Follow in their footsteps a while and then, have a chat. See how it feels.
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