SPIRALLING UPWARD: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE 22ND CENTURY / ESMÉ BEAUMONT Fiction
The university library roof garden has always been my favourite place to study; the fresh air, the vibrant colours of the calendula and the tulips, and the muffled hum of people going about their lives in the city below provide the perfect environment for writing essays. It’s funny: I wonder how many of those people come up here and feel the same way I do—how many of them have the opportunity to get this perspective on our community, to consider where all of this came from. I doubt I would have thought to ask, had it not been for that one teacher who en-
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couraged me to study history— she said I’d be good at it, and at sixteen I had no idea what else I might do, so taking the A-level made sense. She was right, though: I was good at it, and more importantly it was the first school subject I found truly fulfilling to learn. This essay is the perfect demonstration of why: the story of a historical figure so often overlooked in favour of the exciting lives of explorers or the court scandals of kings and queens of centuries past. I love a good adventure story, don’t get me wrong—but my favourite kind of history is the
