ABSTRACT
The modern history we have used in the past to educate our students always included a variety of ages, countries and nations, but it gathered around a central theme, the history of England. In some places it still does, mainly because they do not have experts in Mexico or Malawi to vary the diet drastically. The fact that that history, by the side of a record of folly and horror, tells much that is reassuring about the human animal, its skills and its intelligence and its occasional good sense, is a bonus but it does not constitute the main reason for studying the history of England in a long perspective. That main reason lies in the fact that it offers a singularly helpful way for coming to terms with the past, and a singularly instructive guide to the variety of the past.
