ABSTRACT
In its current guise as reinforcement for current cultural identities, public history allows little scope for the work of professional historians. This means that the light that historical scholarship can cast on topical issues of great moment is obscured. Yet logically there is no reason why the findings of such scholarship should not take their place in public memory. This chapter contends that the social utility of history is lost sight of if it is treated as antithetical to public memory. The chapter considers the case for enlarging our definition of public memory, and in so doing to elaborate the role of historians as bearers of socially useful knowledge. The argument is developed with prime reference to Britain, where public memory has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention in recent years, and its global context. It is illustrated using two brief case studies which consider the British Poor Law and the former colony of Zimbabwe/Rhodesia.
