Images of Fairfax in modern literature and film

On the 400th anniversary of his birth, it seems an appropriate time to reach out beyond academia to consider how Fairfax has been presented to the public in modern times. A genealogical organisation, the Fairfax Society, celebrates and promotes his memory, whilst there are monuments that commemorate him at York Minster, the Bodleian Library and his burial place at Bilbrough. Yet the way in which Fairfax has been presented to the public in modern times has been less through academic research, museums and memorials, than through theatre, novels, biography, poetry and cinema. The production of these media has not always involved historians, and yet it ought to be historians’ business to influence how historical characters are presented to the wider public. In recent times, as academic concerns for the quality of popular or public history have grown, historians have begun to engage more with visual media ‘as both a competitor and a collaborator’ in communicating the past to the public.1 This chapter will examine how well-informed these popular images of Fairfax have been, and the motives underpinning their presentation of him to the public. [First paragraph] © Ashgate Publishing, 2014.