Ian McEwan states in his novel’s title a concern with What We Can Know. Clearly, this concern with the nature and limits of knowledge is central to the conduct of history including predictive history, biography and the study of the art or even counterfactual forms of those things. However, the epigram of this novel, taken … More Ian McEwan states in his novel’s title a concern with ‘What We Can Know’. Clearly, this concern with the nature and limits of knowledge is central to the conduct of history including predictive history, biography and the study of the art or even counterfactual forms of those things. However, the epigram of this novel, taken from the biographer Richard Holmes, implies that biography embodies ‘human truths poised between fact and fiction’ themselves which requires the question of ‘what we can know’ but also goes on to ask ‘what we can believe, and finally what we can love’.