Historians on History. - Review - book review

Historians on History. John Tosh, editor. Longman [pound]16.99 p.b. 348 pages. ISBN 0-582-35795-0. This anthology brings together the writings of some of the most famous names in historical writing. There are selections from C. V. Wedgwood, J. H. Plumb. E. H. Can, Sir Herbert Butterfield, Christopher Hill, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Lawrence Stone, Theodore Zeldin and Richard Hofstadter.

The editor's aim is to offer 'a large number of short extracts instead of a small number of long ones' in order to 'represent as wide a cross-section of the debates as possible'. The collection's aim is to discuss 'the governing rationale of the discipline as a whole' as represented in thirty-eight historians whose work has been published in English, or in English translation, over the past fifty years. The contributors are all historians, not philosophers of history and this gives the contributions a realism that those who do not actually write history usually lack. The editor's aim is to 'offer insight into the mentality of histor ians, rather than to reveal the full range of critical perspectives on history which critics from outside the profession have explored'. He groups his selections round four 'aspirations': to discover what happened in the past and what it was like to have lived in the past; to see if there is a pattern or goal in man's history; to see how history can be used for immediate political or ideological aims; and, finally, to ask if history really does offer insights and lessons for the present.

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