ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the opportunities offered to the historian by oral history, and the conceptual and methodological issues that it raises. In the first instance, this involves looking at the use made of oral history, not just in colleges and universities, but also in the wider community where it has found a home. The chapter suggests that range of contexts within which oral history has made a valuable contribution to historical research. Inner-city regeneration may improve the urban infrastructure but often it is accompanied by the disruption, even dismantling of the local community. Oral history can retrieve histories of both urban and rural communities and give voice to people whose views and lives might otherwise go unrecorded. The King's Cross Oral History Project–a project run by community volunteers–addresses itself to that anxiety by attempting to record the voices of people who have lived in that area over a long period.
