History Today

Six leading historians of science define their discipline.

Brian Holden Reid examines the substance of the legend behind 'Lawrence of Arabia'.

Eric Hobsbawm has recently been honoured with a second Festschrift, The Power of the Past, edited by Pat Thane, Geoffrey Crossick and Roderick Floud, an appropriately unusual distinction for an unusually distinguished historian.

Go to a dinner party with unknown academics and you might well come away with the idea that for diversion they read Dostoevsky and Kafka, sparing the occasional sneering glance for the annual recipient of the Booker Prize. When you get to know them better, you are as likely to discover that they really devour thrillers on a massive scale.

What use can historians make of those diaries which politicians keep for posterity – and rush into print? John Campbell considers two viewpoints of the 1964-1970 Wilson government, those of Richard Crossman and of Barbara Castle.

The building in which I work has a chequered past. One section was once a laboratory of physical chemistry; another, the old Cambridge Free School, whose hall still sports a splendid hammer-beam roof.

Readers of Zuleika Dobson will recall the occasion when Mr Pedby, the Junior Fellow, read grace. As they listened to the false quantities of his Latin, the occupants of the high table experienced an unusual pleasure. They knew that they were present at an occasion which was to become an Oxford Legend.

War is prominent among the forms of human experience that have most readily stimulated poetry. In combat both mind and body strain at the end of their tether.

Peter Burke considers the various works dealing with the Renaissance