(*Because a good title is of paramount importance, no?) A writer really does need to know everything. If he wants to be a GOOD writer, that is. Even a fantasist needs an endless plethora of facts floating around in the fishbowl of his brain. Failing this, as we all must fail, as there is no one who knows EVERYthing, as in fact it is impossible for anyone to know everything, said writer needs ready access to information. The Internet has helped a lot in this regard. Typically one can log in faster and easier than one can drive to the nearest library, and even then search engines tend to be quicker than thumbing through volumes of books in search of some needed factoid.
I mention all this because it’s really cool when, in the midst of providing fare for this or one of the other websites for which I write, I learn new things. I never knew, for example, that England has had no human remains from the pre-agricultural era discovered anywhere therein. The exception is Oronsay, a little island in the Hebrides, where the last of Britain’s’ first people, its nomadic hunter-gatherers, were holding out even as the population of the mainland had turned to growing crops. Technically these people were more fishermen than hunters, but they were still the closest to the “savage” end on the scale of human development that has ever been discovered in England.
