“History is the lies of the victors,” says the narrator of Julian Barnes’s novel The Sense of an Ending. The narrator is a young student when he says this. Later he will alter his opinion. When he expresses this opinion, however, his history teacher adds that history is “also the self-delusions of the defeated.” Many years later, having learnt many lessons from life, the narrator says that history is “more the memories of the survivors, most of who...