Underlying the generally oblivious attitude of teachers and learners towards the past is insufficient respect for the role of memory in giving meaning to experience and access to knowledge. We shape our identity by making sense of our past and its relationship to present and future selves, a process that should be intensively cultivated when we are young. It is vital for English teaching to put collective memory to work in two ways: to recall salient features of the historical development of our field of study, and to revive the memory of certain historical realities that contemporary culture prefers to repress. The study of historical fiction can help to retain the kind of cultural memory that testifies to what humanity has suffered, and this essay concludes with personal reflections on the writing of novels set in times past.