Biographers and their dwindling numbers
The fact that we know enough about historical people to fill hours of primetime television on slow news days is down to the excellent work of historians and more importantly, the biographers who followed said people and chronicled their experiences. Clearly people like Napoleon had the luck of the draw in the selection of biographers, as against, say Bertrand Russell, a Brit of extraordinary achievements in the field of mathematics and logic and remarkable contributions to causes such as the women's suffrage movement; yet who apparently stood out to many of his peers because of his 'bad breath'. With a biographer able to assert such power over the very history we look to, what problems are keeping their numbers down? The early biographers were, of course, employed in the royal courts. That meant any creative liberties taken to glorify the ruler were rewarded with ornaments, and any attempts made to point out flaws in the empire were rewarded with a noose. Since wearing