ABSTRACT
Historians were expected to play their part in maintaining the image intact. In 1993 the Jewish Historical Society celebrated its centenary. It is worth recalling that the notion of establishing a society devoted to Anglo-Jewish history was viewed with not a little misgiving, and that those who established it and who supported its establishment were at pains to justify its existence in terms of the good account it would give, to the Gentiles, of the Jewish people. When the then Jewish Board of Guardians, founded in 1859, decided to commission a centenary history, Vivian Lipman was not their first choice. They turned initially to a young Anglo-Jewish academic, an objective scholar in every sense of the word; this young man produced a chapter for the consideration of the grandees. The communal leadership did its best to prevent any but the most affluent of them from ever settling permanently in Britain.
