If you know how a trick is done, if you have peered through the smoke and looked past the mirrors, if you have figured out how the illusion is accomplished, surely you can no longer be fooled by it? Surely?
The smoke-and-mirrors trick I thought I had seen through sits at the centre of British history, how it is generally taught and understood. Like all the best illusions it draws your eye in one direction, away from the details the illusionist does not want you to see. It is carefully designed to frame and delineate our understanding of the past by focusing our attention away from certain linkages and connections.
