Historiography

No marriage has been documented so assiduously as that of Thomas and Jane Carlyle. Ronald Pearsall describes how a famous Victorian historian was the first who attempted to unveil its secrets.

C.V. Wedgwood assesses the impact of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, 1869-1969

Gwyn Jones remembers a great Northern historian, who met a violent death half way through the thirteenth century, and who has left us a memorable account of a famous Norwegian chieftain, murdered in 995.

In 1569, Richard Grafton, an enterprising London printer completed the first attempt to provide a critical history of England. Martin Holmes describes the process.

G.R. Crone analyses the influences on, and development of, geographical thought over centuries.

C.T. Allmand introduces the chronicler, Jean Froissart, who left to posterity a fascinating account of the events and attitudes of his age, which he himself mirrored so faithfully.

Described by Bossuet as “a Protestant in friar's clothing,” Sarpi was an historian who saw that religion might be a cloak for political designs and, as Peter Burke describes, organised his historical writings around this point.

“... At the distance of twenty-five years,” wrote Edward Gibbon, “I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first ... entered the Eternal City.” By J.J. Saunders .

After the sack of Rome by the Goths in the year 410, the Roman world experienced some of the unease that afflicts Western civilization today; S.G.F. Brandon describes how the late Roman world found assuagement in the writings of Saint Augustine.

In London, at Harvard, in Washington and during his extensive world travels, Henry Adams elaborated his penetrating views on the nature of history and of the American experience. By John Raymond.