Historiography

Both history and historical fiction depend on a combination of imagination and rigorous research. The difference is found in the balance of these ingredients. 

Historiography is one of the essential tools for unlocking the past. Without it, history is a bloodless pursuit. 

How the collapse of the world he knew and loved in 1914 later made the promising young scholar and diplomat into one of the most extraordinary and controversial historians of our time.

The leading light of the French Annales school revolutionised the writing of history by imbuing it with wider, holistic, narratives and literary flair, says Alexander Lee.

Inspired by a recent article in the New Statesman, we asked seven historians about how their understanding of the past has changed.

Despite shifting priorities in education, the study of ancient and medieval history remains as important as ever.

In the debate over the term 'Dark Ages' the importance of Tintagel in early medieval Britain should not be forgotten.

In the 18th century, when women in scholarship were not encouraged and medieval languages were little-studied even by men, Elizabeth Elstob become a pioneer in Anglo-Saxon studies, her work even finding its way into the hands of Thomas Jefferson.

Bishop William Stubbs was the last of the amateur historians and arguably the discipline’s first professional.

John Aubrey, best known for his concise and incisive pen portraits of his 17th-century contemporaries, left no diary of his own. Ruth Scurr set herself the challenge of imagining one from the remnants of his life.