No time like the present for diving into history

Journalist and history enthusiast Philip Bowern looks forward to the Chalke History Festival, which brings some of the nation's top historians and writers to the West Country

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HISTORY, as some wag once put it, is just one damn thing after another. But it's increasingly understood that studying the past is the best way to make sense of the present and navigate the future. To do that with any degree of success requires expert guidance.

That's maybe one reason, during these turbulent times, that historians are seen as playing an important role in giving us some vital perspective on the world. Those who can do so in an entertaining way are at a huge advantage in getting across important messages.

The fact that the best historians with the most effective way of communicating are, for a week in late June, gathered in a field in a beautiful corner of the rural West Country is too good an opportunity to miss for anyone interested in the world and how we got to where we are today.

That's why the Chalke History Festival (June 23-29) in the village of Broad Chalke, between Shaftesbury and Salisbury in the stunning Chalke Valley is such an important and fascinating event.

This year's line up of speakers, living history exhibitors and out and out entertainers is as strong as ever and the broad sweep of history covered as vast as it has been in the more than ten years of this event.