Today's notes on history

One or two more e-mails came today on the review of Peter Lake's new book followed by a picture posted on the Foxearth and District Local History Society Facebook page. It concerns a village I knew very well for many years. In recent times I have been involved in studying and contacting local history societies in the county of Essex. There are a very large number of these but the one at Foxearth covering a very small community and three neighbouring parishes is spectacularly successful with several thousand members. I suspect this is due to very shrewd posting and the inclusion of a wide range of photographs covering Essex and the counties of East Anglia to the north. Its appeal and vitality shows what can be done in a local setting. Unfortunately, academic departments of history have come under threat of extinction in some U.K. universities - e.g. at Northampton, the South Bank and, most recently, at Oxford Brookes. Why accountants and administrators think "history" is an expendable subject is a mystery but, like other historians, I do believe that thought needs to be given to how the discipline will survive outside universities if this trend continues. Learned societies and local history groups offer one route to survival alongside the internet. Apart from these concerns, I have enjoyed discovering Zelia Nuttall's work on the Aztecs from the Harvard Magazine and reading Colin Kidd's tribute to J.G.A.Pocock following his death. My Virginia Company explorations continue.