Historiography

We should resist using ‘medieval’ as another word for backward. The 15th century, in particular, was a time of remarkable progress and enlightenment.

The relationship between an ‘unquiet past’ and the concerns of the present has been a key feature of recent engagements with the Spanish Civil War.

Carol Dyhouse questions some of the assertions made by John Gardiner in his 1999 article about the Victorians.

Noel Annan examines the achievement of a great Victorian prophet.

The anthropologist Margaret Mead, author of best-selling studies of ‘primitive’ peoples, became a major influence on US military thinking during the Second World War.

A Liberal, a Catholic and a great Historian who yet never composed a great work of history—these are some of the aspects in which Roland Hill considers Lord Acton's career.

Not problems of the Squire’s pedigree, or of titles to land, but the origins and growth of town and village communities, W.G. Hoskins argues, should be the subjects of local historians today.

As prophet and economist, Marx is a familiar figure. But what, asks Lindley Fraser, was his real contribution to the writing of history?

James Joll introduces the career of an extraordinary German historian and patriot.

L.B. Namier investigates the “ever-recurring divergence between fixed ideas and a changing reality”.