THERE IS A condition described by Maya Angelou in the first instalment of her memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Random House, 1969), in which a traumatised young girl retreats from the world in preference for the safety of a cultivated interiority. Hemmed in by convention and a bad experience, she relies on herself, her capacity to imagine scenes more conducive to her health. The outside world of grown-ups constitutes an abiding threat; the inside world of her own making provides safety and sustenance.

Could the same malady be applied to history? Can a person feel afflicted to such an extent by knowledge of a history of damage that the hurt of history becomes personalised, no longer a matter of another time and people but felt as real and here and now?