In a commentary on Philip Ethington's paper it is acknowledged that historians apparently do tend to ignore time believing they have little reason to tinker, it being a concept tangential to their main interests. But this is not, in fact, the case. It might be through inadvertence and not thinking about time in the way Ethington does in his estimable paper, but historians are, of course, centrally concerned with time. Quoting the historian of the American frontier Frederick Jackson Turner as a paradigmatic case it is suggested that historians should engage with a range of theorists who have variously discussed time such as McTaggart, Dilthey, Rorty, Ricoeur, Genette, and Chatman, concluding that the fictive understanding of time demands the attention of historians.