Reading popular history

I don’t usually plug history magazines but I do enjoy BBC History and BBC Who Do You Think You Are?

What you get are short informative stories with links to new interpretations and recent developments.

All of which mean you can dip in or use it as an introduction to a more in depth study.  So in this month’s in BBC History “following the confirmation that the Leicester remains are indeed Richard III’s, historians and experts share their views on the discovery – and what should happen next,” along with articles on Thomas Cromewell, Henry V and the men who fought in Nelson’s navy.

Nor is the material purely about famous men or centred on events here in Europe. This month also includes a look at he history of the Central African Republic and in previous editions much on the hidden history of the contribution of women to our cultural, political and social past.

Added to that there are book reviews, and both magazines have on line links.*

My own favoured story from this month is THE AGE OF OPPORTUNITY in which Emma Griffin** explains how 19th century working-class autobiographies could revise our understanding of the industrial revolution.”

There may be more of these than we have so far thought and “if we listen to these, we hear a story very different from the one we are used to”

It’s an interesting and challenging new look at a conventional story and is nicely timed to take any one who is interested on to her new book Liberty's Dawn, A People's History of the Industrial Revolution, due out at the end of March.

According to the publishers, "it is a  remarkable book [which] looks at hundreds of autobiographies penned between 1760 and 1900 to offer an intimate firsthand account of how the Industrial Revolution was experienced by the working class. 

The Industrial Revolution brought not simply misery and poverty. On the contrary, Griffin shows how it raised incomes, improved literacy, and offered exciting opportunities for political action. For many, this was a period of new, and much valued, sexual and cultural freedom. This rich personal account focuses on the social impact of the Industrial Revolution, rather than its economic and political histories."

All of which takes me back to that simple point that such magazines as BBC History, and BBC Who Do You Think You Are? are not just light popular reads, designed to pander to that growing interest in the past.

So to conclude then, well worth the cover price, or for that matter a subscription.

*http://www.historyextra.com/

http://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/

**Emma Griffin, senior lecturer at the University of East Anglia

Pictures; cover from the March edition of BBC History, the February edition of BBC Who Do You Think You Are? and an illustration from the novel, Life & Adventures of Michael Armstrong Factory Boy, by Francis Trollope, published in 1844