In the north of our county there is a stone wall that runs for two miles and then simply stops. It was started in the 15th century by a king who feared a military force from the sea. (11) Some say the money ran out; others say the enemy never came. The truth is simpler: the king died, and the next one feared other things. Farmers took the stones for their own walls, (12) today you can find a piece of a castle in a pig house. (13), the wall is the most visited place in the county. The view is beautiful and the path is full of visitors, but people do not come to see what was built, (14) to stand where somebody changed his mind.
Every country tells stories about its own beginning, and every one of those stories has been changed. (15) A story is repeated because it is useful now, not because it is correct. A king who lost a war may become a king who chose peace. A war that began over land may be remembered as a war about a word. None of this is a lie, (16) each teller believed what he said. (17), history is not a box of facts but a conversation that never ends. The useful question is not only what happened, (18) who is telling me, and what do they need me to feel?