ABSTRACT
Historians have always told stories. From Thucydides and Tacitus to Gibbon and Macaulay the composition of narrative in lively and elegant prose was always accounted their highest ambition. History was regarded as a branch of rhetoric. History has always had many mansions, and must continue to do so if it is to flourish in the future. The split between social history on the one hand and intellectual history on the other has the most unfortunate consequences. Most of the great problems of history remain as insoluble as ever, if not more so. The fundamental reason for the shift among the 'new historians' from the analytical to the descriptive mode is a major change in attitude about what is the central subject-matter of history. It is clear that a single word like 'narrative', especially one with such a complicated history behind it, is inadequate to describe what is in fact a broad cluster of changes in the nature of historical discourse.
