Herbert Butterfield: Historian as Dissenter

Contemporary Review, Jan, 2005

Herbert Butterfield: Historian as Dissenter. C.T. McIntire. Yale University Press. [pounds sterling]30.00. xxv + 499 pages. ISBN 0-300-09807-3. Herbert Butterfield is, perhaps, best remembered for his book, The Whig Interpretation of History which set new standards in British historiography. This 'intellectual biogroaphy' is by a Canadian scholar who knew Butterfield and who had had access to his surviving manuscripts.

His aim is 'to explore the work of Butterfield as historian'. This is 'a study in the history of historiography', not a 'full blown biography' or a 'life and times'. Ironically, Butterfield's life is itself an academic rags-to-riches tale of a working class Wesleyan Methodist boy from the West Riding who ended up as Regius Professor of History in Cambridge. Prof. McIntire examines not just the published but the unpublished work to see, as it were, Butterfield from the inside out, or history in the making. For Butterfield the Christian religion and historical investigation were the polar stars of his existence and there was a great unity to his life, work and thought. The author has done a first-rate and truly scholarly piece of work in investigating, analysing and presenting this historian and writer and the biography will in its right become invaluable for students of history and of historiography. (R.G.H.)