I am writing this on August 15, which is Macbeth's day, though I rather wish I'd started yesterday, for reasons that will shortly become apparent.

Everyone knows the story of Macbeth - the monster who murdered Old King Duncan in his bed, slaughtered his way to despotic power, and died at the hands of Macduff on the steps of Dunsinane Castle after the Battle of Burnham Wood. The "facts" are surprisingly different.

August 14 is the date of Duncan's death, in 1040, but in battle, not in bed. He had become king of Scotland at the age of 19 when his grandfather, Malcolm II, died in 1034. He led an army into Northumbria in 1039, but was driven ignominiously back. Then he turned his attention north, into Macbeth's territory, to prevent the only lawful challenge to his right to rule, though Macbeth hadn't actually issued such a challenge. Macbeth - which should be written MacBeth - called for help from his cousin the Earl of Orkney, and together they defeated Duncan near Forres. Duncan died in battle. He was just 26 years old.

As to MacBeth himself, he was the Mormaer of Moray, not the Thane of Cawdor. August 15 was his death-day, but not at Dunsinane, and not at the hands of MacDuff. 17 years had passed since the Battle of Forres. Accounts of his kingship suggest he was widely respected for his strong leadership and wisdom, that he ruled successfully and peacefully from his castle at Dunsinnan (Dunsinane is another of Shakespeare's errors) north of Perth, and that the realm of Scotland was so secure the king was able to go on pilgrimage to Rome in 1050. But Malcolm, Duncan's surviving son who had been taken to safety in Northumbria after his father's death, was determined that he would be king of Scotland. In 1054, supported by Earl Siward, he marched to stake his claim, defeating MacBeth at the Battle of Dunsinnan - but not killing him. MacBeth remained king, and restored Malcolm's lands. But Malcolm wasn't satisfied. In 1057 he raised anotther army, and attacked MacBeth at Lumphanan in Aberdeenshire. It was here, on August 15, that MacBeth was defeated and killed, leaving Malcolm as king.

So why did Shakespeare get it so badly wrong? He wrote the play for King James I, just after his coronation. James was also king of Scotland and wanted a version of his ancestry that fitted his picture of how history should look. And why all those witches? In 1597 James wrote a treatise on the subject, entitled "Daemonologie"; he was obsessed by witches to the point he personally carried out their torture. Who could resist then, including them in a dramatic work of fiction?

The Internet affords possibilities that never existed before, one of which is the writing of cooperative or collaborative works, another of watching a novel grow by stages. 
 

"A Journey in Time" will be published in 2014. In this blog I shall create a sequel, "A Book of Days", though plot and characters, if any besides the historical, remains open. Each entry will add parts, so you can watch it grow - and contribute, with full acknowledgement. Where "Journey" is fixed on a single date, this will cover the entire year, but focus on a single subject: the creations of the human brain. Submit your suggestions to argaman@theargamanpress.com. I do not guarantee inclusion.
 

But the Internet is full of Books of Days. You can obtain long lists of who was born and died this day in history, or what events deemed to be significant took place.
 

Indeed. But how much is excluded from those lists, and why? Facts are meaningless without context and commentary (Santorio Sanctorius, born March 29 1561, Trieste). Facts are not knowledge, simply because they can be repeated in an exam or on a quiz-show. Without context, without awareness of the agenda of the historian who selected them in, or out, we cannot determine what is "true" or "correct", let alone draw lessons from them. I imagine a future history book which will declare that Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden and Julian Assange were heroes in the cause of freedom, and another which will declare them traitors to the same cause. How can we make an intelligent determination, and use history to construct the future?
 

We create history fictionally by misremembering the past. Sometimes wilfully, as propaganda, to acculturate patriotism, to ensure the past is remembered as we wish it to be; sometimes by denial, as Holocaust revisionists attempt; sometimes by ignoring evidence, as in the case of Roderigo Lopes - another of my books scheduled for release in 2014. Once the fictional version is established as "history", we reinforce it by repetition - the myth of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot, or that other residue of pre-Christian paganism transformed into a political hero, Robin Hood: I shall return to both later in the year.
 

I am fascinated by the ways in which novels and movies determine history - the elevation to sainthood of Oskar Schindler or Lawrence of Arabia, for example; but also the crookbackedness of Richard III, which has become so "historical" that a hunchback disinterred in Leicester in 2013 has been "confirmed" as his corpse, when Shakespeare knew he wasn't hunchbacked, and was satirising a different member of the aristocracy, who was - Robert Cecil. But the corpse is now fact, and the dispute only over tourist opportunities: York versus Leicester.
 

But what of the aforementioned Sanctorius, with whom you are certainly unfamiliar? In 1610 he devised a temperature scale for Galileo's recently invented air thermometer, long before Fahrenheit, Centigrade or Celsius. In 1613 he developed it for use with humans, and then produced a hygrometer, which measures the density of gases. A remarkable man, who would be a Nobel candidate today, and deserves to be remembered for his life, but also for his death - yet he is absent from most history books. He died on Feb 22 1636, in Venice, burned at the stake by the Inquisition as a heretic. His crime: the pursuit of science.