The British imagination throughout history

  Ever since I learned that I was capable of exploring the world around me, of getting acquainted with all of the shapes, the sizes and the colours newly made available to my childhood self, ever since I gained consciousness of the fact that I was alive and breathing and yearning for knowledge and discovery, it was a sort of given that I would gravitate towards the facet of existence which is never fully factual, a part of human life which requires those who choose to engage with it to showcase constant fascination, hope and, perhaps, a tinge of foolishness: that of the imaginary- fairytales of knights and witches from faraway lands, legends of brothers and sisters and lovers whose actual existence no one is certain of, fantastic creatures which you can almost hear the whispers of if you listen closely at night time.
  Safe to say, I have spent a good portion of my life, up until the ripe age of seventeen, obsessing over the world of fantasy, from the insistent nagging my poor mother and more willing grandmother had to endure in order to read every single story book that we owned, followed by pleads to acquire more when we eventually went through them all, to, maybe, secretly, still holding out an inkling of hope that in some corner of the hidden Scottish forests fairies do actually exist, as silly as that may sound.
  The thing is, as a person who came face to face with the hardships of life early on, it wasn’t only about the fact that the tales and legends aroused my curiosity, or thrilled me, or brought me happiness. At a certain point, I genuinely needed them; I needed to believe in something wonderful, something out of the ordinary something more, on a base, psychological level. I believe this is why people come up with these imaginary concoctions, not out of habit or boredom, but for the sole reason that we need them, and there is no shame in admitting that. So what if Brits from five hundred years ago needed to come up with a terrifying lake creature in order to keep their children from going in and drowning? So what if Victorians needed to romanticize their dull existence by popularizing the publishing of fairytales? So what if I needed to believe in unicorns and merfolk in order to maintain mental equilibrium of sorts? That is the way of the world and, in this work, I intend break it down.