Boyd Hilton

Boyd Hilton teaches modern British history at Cambridge and is a fellow of Trinity College. He is the author of Corn, Cash and Commerce: The Economic Policies of the Tory Government 1815-30 and of The Age of Atonement.

Letter

Festschriftiness

6 October 2011

Susan Pedersen quotes me as saying that the contributions of American scholars writing on British history have been ‘respectable at best’ (LRB, 6 October). I cannot confirm or deny that I used those words in a casual email long since deleted, but I clearly remember the point I was making, which was that no American historian working on British history, and likewise no British historian working...

Manchester’s Moment

Boyd Hilton, 20 August 1998

Everybody agrees mat the British, and especially the English, are suffering from an identity crisis. The standard explanation is loss of Empire and failure to find an alternative role. And yet in many ways it was the Empire which sowed the seeds of our present uncertainties.

What is ‘national history’, and what is it for? Who and what should be included in it? And where does it take place? For all that it may appear to offer a uniquely intelligible...

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