Are historians live 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.
Professor Sir Ian Kershaw’s two-volume biography of Hitler, Hubris and Nemesis, has been a huge critical and commercial success in Germany as well as in Britain, where a single-volume abridged paperback comes out in September. “It’s hard to imagine,” says Kershaw, who was knighted for services to history in 2002, “that the British public would give a warm welcome to a biography of Churchill written by a German historian.” Yet Kershaw’s is seen in Germany as the definitive biography of the Führer.
Richard Evans, whose third volume in a series on the Nazis’ rise to power, The Third Reich at War, is scheduled for an October release, also sells well in Germany. “Although, of course, I’m drawing on the work of German scholars,” says Evans, professor of modern history at Cambridge, “I am doing something German historians in general don’t do - that is, providing a broad-based history that is accessible for the general reader. The first two volumes have been translated into 12 languages, including Dutch, French and Italian, and the second volume has proved even more popular in America than it is here.” Anne Louise Fisher, a literary scout with a talent for finding serious nonfiction (as well as literature) for European publishers, agrees. “Ian Kershaw’s book is being published in translation this autumn in Denmark, Sweden, Finland - that’s relatively new. Scandinavian countries used to buy small quantities of such books in English, but now they are having them translated and selling to a bigger market, particularly to history book clubs, which are flourishing over there.”...
Read entire article at Juliet Gardiner at the website of the 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.
Professor Sir Ian Kershaw’s two-volume biography of Hitler, Hubris and Nemesis, has been a huge critical and commercial success in Germany as well as in Britain, where a single-volume abridged paperback comes out in September. “It’s hard to imagine,” says Kershaw, who was knighted for services to history in 2002, “that the British public would give a warm welcome to a biography of Churchill written by a German historian.” Yet Kershaw’s is seen in Germany as the definitive biography of the Führer.
Richard Evans, whose third volume in a series on the Nazis’ rise to power, The Third Reich at War, is scheduled for an October release, also sells well in Germany. “Although, of course, I’m drawing on the work of German scholars,” says Evans, professor of modern history at Cambridge, “I am doing something German historians in general don’t do - that is, providing a broad-based history that is accessible for the general reader. The first two volumes have been translated into 12 languages, including Dutch, French and Italian, and the second volume has proved even more popular in America than it is here.” Anne Louise Fisher, a literary scout with a talent for finding serious nonfiction (as well as literature) for European publishers, agrees. “Ian Kershaw’s book is being published in translation this autumn in Denmark, Sweden, Finland - that’s relatively new. Scandinavian countries used to buy small quantities of such books in English, but now they are having them translated and selling to a bigger market, particularly to history book clubs, which are flourishing over there.”...