You revel in historic subjects — would you call yourself more a historian than a writer?
It’s very revealing that you assume historians are a different species to writers! The historians I most admire, from Gibbon through to Sir Steven Runciman, Simon Schama, Anthony Beevor and Maya Jasanoff are all fine prose stylists. They also have a great sense of narrative — the art of taking raw archive research and turning it into a gripping story. A great historian is made by his research; but he then has the choice as to whether he writes it up academese or literary prose. It’s up to him.

The ideal, as far as I’m concerned, is surely to do groundbreaking research, and then write it up in prose of great clarity and beauty. Few of us manage that, but it’s certainly what I struggle and attempt to do.