In a joint statement released in February 2025, the four leading organisations representing British historians and history teachers noted that the year had already got off to ‘an especially grim start’. Job cuts and reductions in course provision in history departments across the country were, it warned, contributing to a growing sense of crisis within the discipline area.

It is against that ominous background that the Institute of Historical Research (IHR), one of the signatories of the statement, has made available a uniquely rich archive of interviews with UK historians. Speaking of History brings together two major collections of audio-visual material. The first is ‘Interviews with Historians’, conducted in the 1980s and 90s and newly digitised from the original video tapes. Two of the founders of History & Policy – Pat Thane and Alastair Reid – were responsible for launching this project. The second is ‘A Historian’s Life’, a new podcast series in which some of today’s leading practitioners discuss their work with IHR fellow Dr Lisa Pine. Together, they provide clues as to why, despite all the challenges, history retains such a strong appeal and continues to attract talented new recruits to the profession.

The interviews point to the way in which history as a discipline has welcomed and been enriched by scholars from a variety of political backgrounds. The allegiances of those interviewed range from Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, E P Thompson and Dorothy Thompson who all found inspiration in Marxism and a home in the Communist Party of Great Britain, to Maurice Cowling one of the intellectual godparents of the New Right in the 1970s and ‘80s.

What they shared was a sense that history gave them a freedom to explore their own ideas. For Cowling “you could say anything you wanted to say through historical writing”. Hill, meanwhile spoke about being inspired by one of his tutors to “debunk orthodoxies of any kind”. A genuine dialogue, be it between the historian and their material or between the teacher and the student lies at the heart of the discipline. “The last thing we want to do” as the medieval historian and educationalist Marjorie Reeves put it “is to be magisterial” and hand down judgements that are unquestioningly accepted. While the political concerns of historians may have changed over time, pluralism and the instinct for argument and iconoclasm continue to characterise the discipline and drive innovation. As Sir Simon Schama notes in a recent interview “history is a broad mansion”.

Looking back on their own long careers, the interviewees were able to reflect on how particular approaches and topics have gone in and out of fashion. The distinguished agricultural historian, Joan Thirsk, spoke about the way in which fields of study fade and are rediscovered. Rather like the fields of a farm they “need a period of rest and will return again.”

The interviews inevitably reflect contemporary hopes and concerns about the future of History. Some of the most recent speak to the urgent need to defend the discipline. In a forthcoming episode of ‘A Historian’s Life’, Professor Lucy Noakes, the current president of the Royal Historical Society describes her efforts to lead that fight-back in the face of government’s apparent bias towards STEM subjects.

But why is history worth defending? Speaking in 1993, Marjorie Reeves expressed a concern that resonates powerfully today. At best, an engagement with the past “allows us to understand our own place in the present”. In the wrong hands, however, history can be a dangerous thing; a set of prejudices “that lock you into the past” and “make you incapable of understanding anything outside your own society.” Her warning is echoed in a recent interview with Professor Margot Finn who argues “it matters that we understand the past and its complexities, not because it has obvious lessons for the present or the future necessarily but because it helps us think critically, understand better, recognize complexity. …The inability or unwillingness of so many people around the world to recognize complexity is a really worrying trend.” It is this determination to embrace complexity which makes policy-engagement by historians so valuable.

Popular interest in the past is certainly in excellent health. As Schama notes, “the number of people buying and reading and listening to history just grows and grows and grows”. Yet those outputs are only possible because of the world class scholarship produced by the UK’s history departments. The values that have animated that work for generations – of empathy, rigour, imagination and free-thinking – have never been needed more urgently than they are today. And History & Policy remains committed to demonstrating their value to policymakers at every tier of government.