Historiography

Albert Makinson offers a study of Edward II's “over-mighty subject” who, having suffered a violent death as a rebel against the King, became a popular hero and a strong candidate for canonization.

Critics of Cromwell, both British and foreign, have long continued to “find what they were looking for” in the records of his career and character. Some have denounced him as a hypocritical tyrant; others have described him as the finest type of middle-class Englishman. Once at least, writes D.H. Pennington, he has been acclaimed as “the greatest Englishman of all time”.

S.G.F. Brandon poses the question: was Josephus, the famous Jewish historian of the first century A.D., an arch Quisling of the ancient world? He “could scarcely have given a worse impression of himself than that to be derived from the Jewish War,” whence he emerges as an unscrupulous opportunist whose conduct is rendered even more distasteful by a hypocritical profession of the highest motives.

In Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War, P.A. Brunt sees why and how the Greeks failed to encompass peace and unity.

The early life of the “Father of History” was dominated by the clash between East and West—Persia and Greece. Russell Meiggs finds that his story of the Great War is part tragic drama, part folk-tale and part travel-book, but is informed throughout by the desire to verify and by rational curiosity.

J.L. Kirby examines how the 15th-century records of Thomas Hoccleve, Robert Fry and Thomas Broket illustrate the workings of modern civil service in its infancy.

G. Barraclough describes how our vision of history is shaped by the great records of churches, nations, and kings.

L.G. Pine assesses John Horace Round: to the chronicles of family history he brought the acumen and industry of a great historian.

Ian Christie balances the skill and wit of Walpole as a writer against his shortcomings as a historian.

Almost 50 years after his death, Churchill continues to fascinate historians, says Roland Quinault.