“Before you study the history, study the historian,” said EH Carr in his 1961 lecture series ‘What Is History?’ In these lectures, later turned into a book, he argued that no writer of history has ever been able to recount the past without being influenced by their own present and human experience.
It is Carr’s direction to study the historian – a call against objective history – upon which Richard Cohen expands in Making History. This in-depth analysis considers those who have written about the past, and how their writing was influenced by their present.
This story is from the May 2022 edition of BBC History Magazine.
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This story is from the May 2022 edition of BBC History Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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