Matt Elton: You recently sent out an email newsletter in your capacity as Royal Historical Society [RHS] president, highlighting the issue of university history funding. What do you, and the RHS, see as being the problem?
Emma Griffin: My sense is that things are bad, and getting worse. My predecessors as RHS president would occasionally hear from a department being restructured or closed down. Now we get these emails every couple of months. It was also previously the case that a history department at risk of closure was typically a small department in an institution that didn't have a very long tradition of teaching history. But we're now hearing from much larger universities that have had a large and thriving history department for perhaps 60 years, and with 30 or 40 members of staff, that are suffering really serious recruitment and retention problems. So we do think there is a real problem, and we do think it's connected with larger decisions about how undergraduates are funded in the UK, which have particular implications for disciplines such as history.
Are figures available for these cuts?
There is no real way of knowing how many historians, history departments or history degrees are being cut. However, as far as we can tell, there hasn't been a very large drop in the total number of students. Instead, we're looking at the clustering of lots of students in a small number of institutions particularly the 'Russell Group', whose 24 members include the UK's largest, oldest universities. They are suddenly making the decision to admit many more students than in the recent past. This means that other institutions - even those with very healthy, viable history departments - can't recruit enough students. Almost all of the funding for history departments comes from student fees, so if you're not getting enough students, you have a really serious financial problem.
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Denne historien er fra September 2023-utgaven av BBC History UK.
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The King They Couldn't Kill -Want to know why Henry VII is remembered as an intensely suspicious king, wracked by paranoia? The answer, writes Nathen Amin, lies in his death-defying rise to power
Henry’s wary nature is typically attributed to his shaky claim to the throne. The first Tudor monarch was unable to escape the taunt that he was a usurper with no right to call himself king. In fact, his renowned paranoia was the inevitable consequence of a traumatic youth – a trait ingrained long before he harboured ambitions to wear a crown. If we delve deeper into Henry’s background, we can draw a fuller picture of one of our most circumspect of monarchs – one that might elicit sympathy for a long misunderstood king.
The Spy Who Hoodwinked Hitler - Dummy tanks at El Alamein. Bogus generals in Algiers. Sham armies on D-Day. All were ruses masterminded by Dudley Clarke. Robert Hutton tells the story of the British soldier who made an art form of duping the Nazis
Examining the reconnaissance photos, Behrendt was convinced that the Allies weren’t in any hurry. They were constructing some kind of pipeline towards the southern end of their line, probably to carry water, which was barely halfway completed. There were supply dumps appearing in the south as well – always a telltale clue about where an attack would come. True, a large number of trucks were parked at the northern end of the line, about 25 miles back from the front, but they hadn’t moved for weeks.
"People have achieved all kinds of crazy things at the age of 18″
ALICE LOXTON talks to Danny Bird about her book on 18 individuals who left an indelible mark on British history before they were out of their teens
Parthian chicken
ELEANOR BARNETT recreates an ancient Roman dish that borrowed flavours from a rival neighbouring empire in the Middle East
"We need a meaningful story for the new generation - our composite union"
WHAT A SUMMER IT’S BEEN SO FAR, WITH AN astonishing election result.
A Pole apart
ROGER MOORHOUSE is absorbed by a little-known but politically significant Polish princess whose life encompassed the major events of the later 18th and 19th centuries
Medieval England's p olitical miracle
From Magna Carta to parliament, taxation to the law courts, the 13th and 14th centuries laid the foundations for the modern British state
EASTERN PROMISES
Lured by rich trading prospects, from the 17th to the 19th centuries Britain attempted to cultivate relations with China sometimes successfully, but often disastrously. Kerry Brown explores the troubled but ultimately vital links between two ambitious realms
THE GENIUS IN THE SHADOWS
Æthelstan is one of the greatest of all Anglo-Saxon monarchs. So why, asks Michael Wood, does the first king of the English remain so fiendishly elusive?
The long road back The election was tough for the Conservatives - but the past holds clues on how parties can return from the brink
It’s election night 1997, and Jeremy Paxman is grilling Tory grandee Cecil Parkinson.
