Juliet Gardiner: Are historians like David Cannadine and Andrew Roberts an endangered species?
[Juliet Gardiner is the author of Wartime: Britain 1939-1945. She is writing a history of the 1930s for HarperCollins, to be published in 2009.]
When President Bush came to Britain in June, a number of historians were among the dinner guests at 10 Downing Street. One, David Cannadine, was a mover in setting up a History and Policy Unit, in the hope that, when politicians are contemplating such weighty matters as regime change, knife crime or ID cards, they might call on a historian to evaluate past precedents.
Yet Professor Cannadine has just published a book in which he maintains that the morale of professional historians (whose collective name in AL Rowse’s time was reputedly “a poison”, and is now supposedly “a malice”) is at an all-time low. Andrew Roberts, another Downing Street invitee, agrees. He has called for a regulatory authority for historians and suggests it could be called Ofhist. Its task would be to protect what he designates “proper historians” from incursions by “amateurs” into writing history books, and to restrain literary editors from commissioning “Clist celebs” and the writers of “chick lit” to review such historians’ work.
So, where does the truth lie? Are historians the repository of the nation’s past wisdom, essential policy wonks’ adjuncts? Or an endangered species in need of protection from today’s nasty, dumbed-down world? Let’s attempt a historian’s answer: it depends where you stand. Certainly, if that’s in most parts of Europe, the answer would be that the reputation of British historians has never been higher...
Read entire article at The Sunday Times (UK)
When President Bush came to Britain in June, a number of historians were among the dinner guests at 10 Downing Street. One, David Cannadine, was a mover in setting up a History and Policy Unit, in the hope that, when politicians are contemplating such weighty matters as regime change, knife crime or ID cards, they might call on a historian to evaluate past precedents.
Yet Professor Cannadine has just published a book in which he maintains that the morale of professional historians (whose collective name in AL Rowse’s time was reputedly “a poison”, and is now supposedly “a malice”) is at an all-time low. Andrew Roberts, another Downing Street invitee, agrees. He has called for a regulatory authority for historians and suggests it could be called Ofhist. Its task would be to protect what he designates “proper historians” from incursions by “amateurs” into writing history books, and to restrain literary editors from commissioning “Clist celebs” and the writers of “chick lit” to review such historians’ work.
So, where does the truth lie? Are historians the repository of the nation’s past wisdom, essential policy wonks’ adjuncts? Or an endangered species in need of protection from today’s nasty, dumbed-down world? Let’s attempt a historian’s answer: it depends where you stand. Certainly, if that’s in most parts of Europe, the answer would be that the reputation of British historians has never been higher...