ABSTRACT
For all their celebrity status, the new generation of historians still rely on books to establish their authority, to develop their profile, and to make money. Popular history in print appeals to, and caters for, a mass audience in a way that is generally unaudited by professional historians. It is also extremely profitable. In 2003, the publishing company Tempus announced a £10 million profit from its local history series, for instance. History authors command large advances and are marketed aggressively. It is also a massively dynamic genre. Popular history publishing encompasses broad sweep analyses of epochs, biographies, military history, local history and particularised cultural histories. Popular history sections in bookshops and libraries are expanding to cater for an increasing desire for accessible narratives about the past. The generic complexity of the mode is vast, ranging from basic introductory texts in branded and familiar series such as The Idiot’s Guide to Ancient Egypt or World War II for Dummies to people’s history and BBC-led accounts of nation like This Sceptred Isle (‘a simply told story of a century that we can all touch’).1 Formats include history in quotations, biography, cultural history, military history, books about anniversaries, memoirs, histories of science, histories of institutions, witness accounts, historical geography, fact books, art history, autobiography, local history of all types, revisionary history, marginal history. The generic range, number of, and sales figures of popular history from tomes on the English Civil War to accounts of the end of the Raj demonstrate the extent to which historical writing is ingrained and embedded in cultural life, and how it is continually evolving. Popular history is written by those in the academy, by journalists and independent scholars, by politicians, comedians and novelists.2 Popular history is continually added to – but old favourites still continue to be published, so the dynamism of the form is underpinned by the perennials of Antonia Fraser, Eric Hobsbawm, S.R. Gardiner, Stephen Ambrose, Roy Strong, A.J.P. Taylor (even Gibbon is available in paperback). Certain periods are more popular and therefore better served – the Second World War, Egyptology, military history in general, Empire (and these are just British tastes). However, there is still space and a large market for – for instance – a major biography of Robert Hooke, or work on the last rulers of India.3
