I Didn't Think I Had Anything Particular

I'm Not An Historian And I'm Not Wanting To Write About How I Perceive The Social Change Over The Century As A Historian, But As Somebody Who's Walked Through It And Whose Life Has Been Dictated By It Too, As All Our Lives Are.

I Can Walk About London And See A Society That Seems An Absolutely Revolutionary Change From The 1950s, That Seems Completely And Utterly Different, And Then I Can Pick Up On Something Where You Suddenly See That It's Not.

But Who Knows Their Own Child? You Know Bits - Certain Predictable Reactions, A Handful Of Familiar Qualities. The Rest Is Impenetrable. And Quite Right Too. You Give Birth To Them. You Do Not Design Them.

Equally, We Require A Collective Past - Hence The Endless Reinterpretations Of History, Frequently To Suit The Perceptions Of The Present.

I Have Long Been Interested In Landscape History, And When Younger And More Robust I Used To Do Much Tramping Of The English Landscape In Search Of Ancient Field Systems, Drove Roads, Indications Of Prehistoric Settlement. Towns And Cities, Too, Which Always Retain The Ghost Of Their Earlier Incarnations Beneath Today's Concrete And Glass.