Historical fiction is still fiction. Yet the amount of detailed research that goes into the period and characters that writers develop, and the realistic nature of the final product, leads viewers and readers to treat it as history proper. We might think there’s an easy way of separating the factual, historical bits from the made-up, fictional bits, but there isn’t. Plato, it seems, was right: art is dangerous as it can make us believe things that are false. Art is at best a representation of reality, not reality itself. And yet, the same can be said of historical non-fiction. History is also the product of the perspective of the writer, and perspectives belong to individuals, not reality itself, writes Derek Matravers.