History – 520 pages – my copy (paperback; 2009) bought for £12.99 from Waterstones in Plymouth, April 2010
- 3 nods
A historian speaks with his book publisher about his next book idea.
Historian: ‘It’s about the Romans.’
Publisher: ‘It’s been done before.’
Historian: ‘Or about the Greeks.’
Publisher: ‘Read it already.’
Historian: ‘The Normans?’
Publisher yawns, checks his watch.
Historian: ‘The Tudors?’
Publisher stands up and puts on his jacket.
Historian: ‘A history of histories?!’
Publisher is intrigued and gets out the check-book.
That historian is John Burrow, proclaimed (as the inside cover boasts) ‘one of Britain’s leading intellectual historians’. His catalogue of work hints of snootiness – sorry, intellectualism – as goes the title of ‘A Study of Victorian Social Theory’. This, A History of Histories, goes beyond one time period, one war, or one man: it is universal in the largest sense of the word.
Such a book is a big ask, from Herodotus to Eric Hobsbawn, from the Peloponnesian War to late twentieth century Micro History. Burrow tries his damned best to give us a description of the Greek historians (such as Thucydides), the Roman historians (Livy and Tacitus), Crusader and Medieval chroniclers, all the way down to the twentieth century’s peculiar strands of Marxism and increasing professionalism. Not only is the timescale immense; Burrow’s own background reading of all these historians, their works as well as their lives and times is impressive. Just glance at the bibliography and prepare to be dazzled.
But is it really the ‘tour de force’ hailed by many critics? Despite being enlightening, Burrow fails on a primary level: simple readability and lack of entertainment. Rather than being a breeze to follow, his prose is dense. The reader is given dose after dose of historian, yet they all – disappointingly – become mixed into one. Furthermore, his Western bias (admittedly, self-confessed) fails to give us a full, meaty and authoritative work. Ultimately, the scope is too wide for one historian; perhaps such a work would be better served with various articles from many pens.
A History of Histories is a book for those interested in the process and writing of history, rather than those interested in history proper. Such a market, sadly, is waning with the decrease of history students in this country. History, it appears, truly is becoming history.
