Customer Reviews

English Local History: An Introduction (History Handbooks)

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Dr. Tiller is a central figure in the renaissance of English local history studies that has taken place over the last 20 years. In this book, her unapologetic promotion of the "new" local history is strong. This "new" history usually concentrates on thematic studies of communities, and tracks individual lives within those communities. This tends to de-emphasize, for example, landscape studies, or those eras, so important for many of the places that we study, where tracking individuals is often impossible (e.g. Anglo-saxon or earlier periods). Whilst probably not "local history" in the true sense, Dr. Tiller seems to have little regard for the genealogists or those merely seeking nostalgia. We should remember that it is these motives, within the general public, that are the engines which drive the politicians to support the county record offices, which in turn, facilitate the serious studies that Dr. Tiller proposes. Unexpectedly, this book is in fact a good general introduction to the local history of England, as well as being a sophisticated "how to" volume. This is distinctive, therefore, amongst the fairly large bibliography on researching english local history that now exists. An interesting foil is provided by the recent book by Michael A. Williams, "Researching Local History", which is one man's journey around some of the later aspects of the subject. Professor Williams's is also a sophisticated "how to" volume but lacks Dr. Tiller's comprehensiveness. If you want a single volume as a general introduction to the local history of England, then buy Tiller. As a bonus, you will also get a good guide to research techniques, that is probably about as good as any other that is available on this subject.