The idea that the past is a plaything of the present, or a metafiction, is only now beginning to disturb the tranquility of professional historians, but for some 20 years it has been a commonplace of epistemological criticism, and a mainspring of experimental work in literature and the arts. Thus, in magical realism or modern Gothic the fairy tale can appear as the latest thing; while in the visual arts, futurist installations offer themselves as parodies of Old Masters.