Opinion
H&P encourages historians to comment the issues of the day, either with rapid responses or full opinion pieces. The H&P office can help historians to publish opinion pieces in the national media or on this website.
Rapid responses
Historians provide rapid comment on the issues of the day:
- Historians respond to the Queen's speech
(18 November 2009) - Why MPs are paid
Greg Rosen (18 May 2009) - The true lessons of Thatcher's rise
Richard Toye (5 May 2009) - H&P historians' respond to the budget
(22 April 2009)
H&P opinion pieces
Historians write exclusively for the H&P website:
- Cameron and the renewal of the 'property-owning democracy'
Matthew Francis (26 February 2010) - Recreating our political history
Steven Fielding (8 February 2010) - Posters in history
Christopher Burgess (12 January 2010) - Slavery and climate change: lessons to be learned
Jean-Francois Mouhot (16 December 2009) - 'Hijacking' history
Ivan Pregnolato (2 December 2009) - More sex, lies and trafficking
Jane Berney (2 December 2009) - 1989: Divided memories, East and West
James Mark (10 November 2009) - Pinstriped fascism
Matthew Feldman (4 November 2009) - The case for historical advisers in government
Yoav J. Tenembaum (29 October 2009) - Broadband terrorism: A new face of fascism
Matthew Feldman (22 September 2009) - Are school standards slipping?
Adrian Elliott (18 August 2009) - Open public primaries
Jon Lawrence (12 August 2009) - Talking to the Taliban: Lessons from Northern Ireland
John Bew (29 June 2009) - Death of a Speaker
Ann Lyon (19 June 2009) - Car scrapping scheme could learn from green victories of the past
Erin Gill (19 May 2009) - UK Manufacturing decline is the real story of the Budget
Scott Newton (5 May 2009) - History could have predicted a global financial crisis
David Hall-Matthews (28 April 2009) - Cameron's history lesson
Richard Toye (28 April 2009) - The Energy Bill - tinkering while the planet burns?
Campbell Wilson and Dave Elliott (21 July 2008) - Can compulsion work? What history has to say about raising the school leaving age.
Nicola Sheldon (26 June 2008) - The 'ziz-zagging' of British Prime Ministers
Andrew Blick and George Jones (3 April 2008)
Opinion pieces in the media
Articles by members of the H&P Network published in the national media:
- Second thoughts: supporting teenage mothers
Ofra Koffman (Society Guardian, 7 October 2009) - History without bunk
Alastair Reid (Guardian Unlimited, 20 September 2009) - The age old problem of pupils skipping school
Nicola Sheldon (Guardian, 26 February 2009) - How to talk about redistribution: Ben Jackson offers a historical perspective
Ben Jackson (Compass, 30 September 2008) - Polyclinics in London: historical issues
Virginia Berridge (London Journal of Primary Care, simultaneously published as Polyclinics: haven't we been there before? by the British Medical Journal, 23 May 2008) - Avoiding past mistakes
Jim Moher (Guardian Unlimited, 9 September 2007) - Past opportunities
Virginia Berridge (Society Guardian, 20 June 2007) - Enlist the Blitz spirit, get out the carbon ration book [pdf file, 32KB]
Mark Roodhouse (Financial Times, 14 March 2007) - Blair Must not repeat Attlee's pensions mistake [pdf file, 25KB]
Pat Thane (Financial Times, 24 May 2006)
Advice for historians on writing opinion pieces
To be accepted for publication on this website, contributors should observe the following guidelines:
- Articles should be 700-900 words of text in short, clear paragraphs
- Use a punchy, accessible style with no wasted words
- Get to the point in the first sentence and hook your argument firmly into the current issue
- This is an opportunity to give your opinions, but not to rant
- Focus on the current issue, with history used sparingly to make your case
- Deploy brief historical examples and quotations where appropriate
- Read recent press coverage of the issue at hand and make sure your angle is original
- The last paragraph should reinforce your point and the relevance of history
The History News Service website provides excellent advice for historians on writing opinion pieces, with samples and style guidelines. If you have an idea for an article and would like to discuss it, or to submit a draft, please contact Ruth Evans (ruth.evans@sas.ac.uk). We can also help you to place articles with newspapers.
Copyright
Users of the website are welcome to download and reproduce its contents consistent with the fair dealing exceptions, in particular fair dealing for the purpose of research or private study. In submitting their papers to this website authors are considered to have granted the editors a licence to reproduce their work in electronic form, but they continue to retain copyright in their work. The editors retain copyright in the website as a compilation or database, as well as in the underlying source code as a computer program.
Disclaimer
The views expressed on this website are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the editors or other staff members of the Centre for Contemporary British History, University of London, the Centre for History in Public Health, University of London or the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge.