Diarmaid MacCulloch's Advice on Writing: Rigor, Skepticism, and the Historian's Craft

Diarmaid MacCulloch is one of the most acclaimed historians alive. His Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years runs 1,200 pages and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is a professor at Oxford and a fellow of the British Academy. He has spent decades turning mountains of archival evidence into prose that general readers actually want to read.

In a conversation on David Perell's How I Write podcast, plus interviews with Historia Magazine and the British Academy, MacCulloch shared the principles behind his writing. They apply far beyond history.

The Historian's Motto: "Yes, But"

"Yes, I do see that, but I also see this." This is MacCulloch's framework for honest thinking. It prevents idealizing the past. It prevents oversimplifying anything into a heroic narrative.

Most writing suffers from the opposite impulse. Writers pick a thesis and defend it. MacCulloch says: hold two truths at once. The tension between them is where insight lives.

Be Skeptical, Then Be Sympathetic

Be skeptical, and then be sympathetic. The skepticism stops you from being too sympathetic.

Challenge your sources. Question motives. Look for what's missing. But also recognize that every person you write about is fundamentally interesting. Both impulses are necessary. Skepticism alone produces cynicism. Sympathy alone produces hagiography.

MacCulloch says the most valuable quality a historian can bring is understanding what it feels like to be disappointed, rejected, to fail. He points to Thucydides, perhaps the first great historian, who was a defeated general in the Athenian army. His answer for why Athens lost was hubris - they had overreached themselves. "That's a very important lesson. So it's there right from the start of history." Too many historians since have ignored it, preferring triumphant narratives.

State Your Biases Upfront

We all start with biases, and we need to know ourselves what those biases are...you must tell your readers.

MacCulloch begins books by stating who he is and what shaped his perspective. This is not weakness. It is intellectual honesty. Readers deserve the context to evaluate your interpretations. Pretending to objectivity is a form of deception.

Always Go Back to Original Sources

Always go back to the original sources, never trust a secondary authority because they may have got it wrong.

During his Cromwell research, MacCulloch discovered that many historical documents had been incorrectly dated by previous scholars. The only way he found this was by checking the originals himself. Secondary sources are useful as maps. They are not the territory.

Read Secondary Sources First, Then Primary

This seems to contradict the previous point. It does not. Read the classic historians first to understand the landscape. Know what the existing arguments are. Know what the cliches are. Then go to the primary documents with sharper eyes. You will see what others missed because you know what they saw.

Embrace Uncertainty

Primary sources are "partial, they are fragments." MacCulloch uses language like "we may think it is quite likely" rather than false certainty. History operates in degrees of confidence, not absolutes.

He contrasts this with novelists. When Hilary Mantel was writing the Wolf Hall trilogy about Thomas Cromwell - the same subject MacCulloch was researching as a historian - she sent him the typescript of her third book to check for historical mistakes. Not fictions. Mistakes. "I'm not trying to change your story," MacCulloch told her. "All I'm saying is that actually it was not the abbot of St. Bartholomew. It was the prior of St. Bartholomew. You'll want to get that right." Mantel's picture of Cromwell seemed "startlingly right" to MacCulloch. She spotted two things he considered most important about Cromwell's brief career: that he was besotted with Cardinal Wolsey and that he detested Anne Boleyn, even though both he and Anne were Protestant reformers. "People can share an ideology while still detesting each other."

The historian's constraint is that you can never fill in the gaps. The novelist is liberated from that. But both need to get the facts right. This is where uncertainty becomes a strength: the writer who says "we may think" is more trustworthy than the one who fakes confidence.

Vivify Through Place

MacCulloch's most vivid example: filming a documentary about Ivan the Terrible in Moscow. The crew was setting up shots in St. Basil's Cathedral, normally packed with tourists. For 45 minutes, MacCulloch had the building to himself. Everyone knows St. Basil's from outside - the ice cream cornet domes in vivid colors. Inside is different. The plan is perfectly logical, a series of symmetrical octagons. But nobody ever sees the plan. They experience the building, which is terrifying in its verticality, its claustrophobia, its crowdedness. "It is the mind of a mad tsar."

When the cameraman came up and said they were ready, MacCulloch changed the script on the spot. On the plane home, he wrote it into the book. "It was an extraordinary example of how place could simply alter the way in which you looked at the story you were telling."

He cites Robert Caro going to live in Texas for three years to understand LBJ - appreciating "the terrible loneliness and poverty of the situation." MacCulloch's own sense of place began in rural Suffolk, in his father's parish church. He spent childhood in a 16th-century church, looking at gentry tombs, enjoying the paradox that the biggest tomb belonged to someone who was still a Roman Catholic after the Protestant Reformation. That paradox, noticed by a nerdy boy, made him a Tudor historian.

Beautiful Writing Is Not Purple Prose

Purple prose is definitely a downer. Any prose which is purple is not appropriate.

MacCulloch seeks writing that makes readers smile while illuminating meaning. Avoid cliche-ridden, leaden, unimaginative sentences. But also avoid overwrought, self-conscious literary flourishes. The goal is clarity that is also a pleasure to read. Irony should reveal truth about your subject, not exist for its own amusement.

Adapt Language for Your Audience

It's the same history, which you have to couch in different words, but the words must be true to the rigorous and pedantic way.

MacCulloch learned this teaching at a theological college where students were not necessarily interested in history. The content does not change. The vocabulary and structure do. Rigor and accessibility are not opposites.

Stop Simple Stories

We are the guardians of sanity in society...stop simple stories being told, because simple stories are virtually always the wrong story.

MacCulloch offers a concrete example. The great Anglo-Saxon historian Bede created the story of the English-speaking people and the glory of the Christian mission from Rome. Beautiful, foundational work. But Bede played down the Christianity already present when Augustine arrived. Now, archaeologists opening Anglo-Saxon graves from the decades after Augustine have found richly furnished Christian burials of women - probably abbesses who led monasteries containing both nuns and monks, heading the mission as much as any male bishop. Bede's heroic narrative was not false. It was incomplete. The historian's job is to say "yes, but."

MacCulloch also insists writers account for irrationality. "We underestimate the role of lunacy in history." The Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, buried under Dan Brown conspiracy theories, may have a simpler explanation: the earl who built it was probably mad. He had enough money to indulge his lunacy to build "this really quite silly building, which is beautiful but is not very sensible." Henry VIII's bewildering reversals in his final year are better explained by chronic physical pain than by grand political theories. A doctor once told MacCulloch: "You need to understand this complete change of attitude to a particular person by how he feels in the morning."

Work Sustainably

MacCulloch works 8:30 AM to 7:00 PM maximum. He includes a substantial lunch break and an afternoon nap. He never works evenings. He divides the day into thirds and works two of them.

His mentor Sir Geoffrey Elton taught him that working nonstop prevents good writing. Regular breaks maintain quality. This is not laziness. It is the discipline of knowing that a tired mind produces mediocre prose.

Elizabeth the First Was a Carrot

Asked how he would teach a semester on being a historian, MacCulloch says he would start with a game he invented called "Elizabeth the First Was a Carrot." Twenty questions, each asking: is this a historical statement?

"Elizabeth the First came to the throne in 1558." Historical. Not interesting, but true. "Elizabeth the First came to the throne in 1559." Not historical. She did not. Now you have to prove it. "Elizabeth the First was a true daughter of her father." Ambiguous - metaphorical greatness or genetic lineage? Then question 20: "Elizabeth the First was a carrot." Students by this point are in the spirit of the game. They speculate it might be a Tudor idiom for redheads. "Well done," MacCulloch says. "I made it up. It's not true at all. I didn't suggest it to you. That was your idea. Clever, but wrong."

The game teaches the different ways history works - proof, disproof, ambiguity, and the danger of pattern-seeking. "History is about play, like all good human activities," MacCulloch says. "But it's also passionately important to get it right, because it's about sanity."

What Writers Can Learn from a Historian

MacCulloch's principles are not specific to history. They apply to any non-fiction writing that deals with evidence and argument.

• Hold two truths at once. The tension is where insight lives.
• State your biases. Pretending to objectivity is deception.
• Check original sources. Secondary accounts inherit errors.
• Embrace uncertainty. Overstating confidence is insincerity.
• Visit places. Physical experience reveals what documents cannot.
• Write clearly, not ornately. Beautiful prose is simple prose.
• Work sustainably. A tired mind produces mediocre sentences.
• Know your limits. Do what you do well.

These principles also explain why AI-generated non-fiction fails. AI cannot visit places. It cannot hold genuine uncertainty. It cannot check primary sources. It can, however, help you edit your own rigorous work for clarity. That is the role it should play.

This post draws from MacCulloch's appearance on David Perell's How I Write podcast, his Historia Magazine interview, and his British Academy profile. Athens is an AI writing editor that helps you tighten your prose while keeping your analytical voice intact.