Musings

Kate Tiller is a Founding Fellow of Kellogg College, and Reader Emerita in English Local History at the University of Oxford, where as Director of Studies in Local History at the Department for Continuing Education she planned and implemented the University’s first graduate degree course specifically designed for part-time students, the MSt in English Local History. She edited The Local Historian from 1983 to 1988, and is a Visiting Fellow of the Centre for English Local History at the University of Leicester.

In the second edition of ‘English Local History: an introduction,’ Tiller’s obvious enthusiasm for the subject is evident as through a clear and readable prose supported by maps, diagrams, line drawings and photographs, she sets out not only to “provide a guide which illustrates the diversity of the available evidence but which also points to pathways through a potentially distracting jungle of information.” While giving a taste of the joy of original research, this should also enable the budding local historian to produce a de-mythologized history that is not only of interest to the local inhabitants, but also acts as a store of references for the national historian. Thus avoiding one of the criticisms aimed at the amateur local historian, that their work is often descriptive, uncritical, anecdotal and rose-tinted, ignoring the inward and outward movement of people and influences, overlooking those links with the outside world which help to make sense of what is found locally.

This is achieved by the inclusion of detailed summaries of substantial pieces of recent local research which exemplify the value of evidence taken from various combinations of source material. Background information is also provided on national trends and events, stressing some general themes and questions that are relevant to research at the local level for each of the five chronologically arranged chapters – the Anglo-Saxon period; the middle-ages; the early modern period; the years 1750-1914; and the twentieth century, which in the first edition was dismissed in three pages.

While acknowledging the difficulty in judging the recent past due to its closeness, the chapter covering the twentieth century never raises the issue of where does history end and current affairs begin. Also in this chapter the case studies of previous chapters are reduced to a list of articles that have appeared in ‘The Local Historian.’ This is disappointing as this expanded chapter is the major addition to this second edition of the book.

As an introductory guide ‘English Local History’ cannot be expected to go into great depth on the subjects that it covers and it is in the discussion of sources that this book falls short. The publishers’ claim that “the principal sources of evidence available to the local historian are introduced, and suggestions given as to how they can be used” is never fully realised, and is best read in conjunction with a guide to sources such as Thompson and Carter’s ‘Sources for Local Historians’ Also Tiller offers no practical advice on subjects of use to those new to local history research such as note taking and the use of local studies libraries and archives as given in ‘Local History: a handbook for beginners’ by Philip Riden, or transcribing and calendaring documents which David Dymond covers in ‘Researching and Writing History’ – although this is not an introductory guide to local history.

Tiller has however produced the best of the recent introductory books for local historians, being an introduction in the sense of demonstrating the richness of past life that can be revealed through the systematic investigation of linked and complementary evidence. Providing “a starting point for reconstructing the history, both public and private, of a place, of seeing how and why people acted as they did in the overlapping spheres of their lives, which may range from those of the individual, family or household to links with county, regional and national influences,” allowing the modern local historian to provide a critical account of a place or community, not only recording the main features of its history, but also drawing attention to what is special and what is typical about the place in relation to its neighbours, the wider region and the country at large.