The Voice for History

'I am not very keen on the proposed Historical Association,’ wrote the medieval historian Reginald Lane Poole to A.F. Pollard, the recently appointed professor of constitutional history at University College, London, in April 1906. Pollard was an enthusiast for the proposal but Lane Poole explained that he was ‘not much of an historical teacher myself’ and looked forward to being even less of one in the future. That is the kind of thing scholars sometimes expressed in private correspondence in 1906. Perhaps they still do. Pollard was not deterred and the inaugural meeting went ahead the following month. One hundred years later, the Historical Association (HA) is still meeting.