ABSTRACT
Historians may be justified in exuding some complacency. In a time of fast-moving change, constant educational upheavals, built-in obsolescence, and imminent redundancy for many, they can take some comfort from the thought that, however public attitudes towards their own preserve may fluctuate, at least one thing seems sure: as F. M. Powicke notes above, ‘nobody can abolish the past’. We’ve seen that there may well be attempts to do just that – to abolish the past at both personal and public levels: as individuals, we may try to suppress those aspects of our past we’d rather be without; and ideological reasons continue to abound for excising those memories of a national past that conflict with current political aspirations. But, whatever attempts are made, ‘the past’ persists – eluding containment, seeping through boundaries and barriers into present consciousness once more, resurfacing against the odds, and finally resisting abolition.
