On the Spot: Lucy Noakes

Why are you a historian of modern war? 

My interest in war goes back to the stories my grandparents told me of life in London and Coventry during the Second World War.

What’s the most important lesson history has taught you? 

That the past is too complex and messy to teach us simple lessons.

Which history book has had the greatest influence on you? 

Bruce Scates’ Return to Gallipoli.

What book in your field should everyone read?

Susan R. Grayzel’s At Home and Under Fire.

Which moment would you most like to go back to?

It would be fascinating to see how people actually felt and acted during air raids, but I would need a cast-iron guarantee of safety.

Which historian has had the greatest influence on you?

Penny Summerfield, both as a historian and as a role model.

Which person in history would you most like to have met? 

Sylvia Pankhurst. I would like to hear more about the relationship between her family and her activism.

How many languages do you have? 

Not enough. My French is passable.

What historical topic have you changed your mind on? 

We now have a much better sense of the ways the environment and climate shape history.

What is the most common misconception about your field?

That the history of war is the same as military history.

What’s the most exciting field in history today?

There is some brilliant work being done by historians who are drawing on their own family histories to look at the past through a different lens.

Who is the most underrated person in history… 

Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington.

… and the most overrated?

Éamon de Valera.

Is there an important historical text you have not read? 

Too many.

What’s your favourite archive? 

Mass Observation, an amazing, eclectic archive of ‘ordinary people’.

What’s the best museum?

The Imperial War Museum.

What technology has changed the world the most?

The internet and AI continue to be both incredibly exciting and incredibly worrying.

Recommend us a historical novel... 

Any of Kate Atkinson’s historical novels, but especially Life After Life.

... and a historical drama?

Wolf Hall.

You can solve one historical mystery. What is it?

The mystery of what happened to the Marie Celeste gripped me as a child. It’s nice to have some mysteries in life though.


Lucy Noakes is Rab Butler Chair in Modern History at the University of Essex and President-Elect of the Royal Historical Society.