For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian──ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection that unattainable by the highest art.

: /ˈdʒaɪlz ˈlɪtən ˈstreɪtʃɪ/; 1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was a British writer and critic. Giles Lytton Strachey (pron. His 1921 biography Queen Victoria was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.