Interview

‘What historical topic have I changed my mind on? I used to give the powerful a lot of agency and the oppressed little.’

‘I used to doubt that the changes undergone in western Europe’s “feudal revolution” were substantial; now, I’m inclined to accept that they were.’

‘Which moment would I most like to go back to? I would prefer to stay in the present, thank you.’

‘In postwar Britain I was prejudiced against Germany. Then I studied German history, met German people and changed my mind.’

‘In the US, people often think of British history as quaint or niche, instead of a central force in the making of global modernity.’

What will future generations judge us most harshly for? Failure to write on vellum.

What historical topic have I changed my mind on? Colonialism. I now know that it had no redeeming features.

What historical topic have I changed my mind on? I thought the sacrifice of young women in the Bronze Age was a myth. It wasn’t.

Why am I a historian of Irish politics? I grew up in 1970s Belfast, where contested versions of history were literally written on the walls.

Which person in history would I most like to have met? Mihri Hatun, a poet of Ottoman Bursa, who dared to state that a clever woman was worth 1,000 incompetent men.