After thirty-seven years as a teacher of history in an independent secondary school in Scotland I retired and started writing history instead of teaching it. I know that I lack the capacity for the painstaking routine and attention to detail needed for research. But I have always loved talking about the past, and making history interesting and enjoyable and significant for every student, young or old, who cares to listen. That is why my writings are called "Lectures". Some of them have been delivered to an audience; some have not. But the intention is that they have the brevity, the accessibility and the light touch of a good lecture.
My method is to write from memory and then check the facts later. This does at least mean that my writings are never merely summaries of the work of others. They are what one reviewer called "fresh thinking on familiar topics". On the whole my memory and my ideas are at their freshest when I am writing about subjects I have studied and taught for years. My senior teaching has mostly been about Britain and Europe from 1500 to the present day. If you add to the thirty-seven years of employment four years of university and three years as a senior school pupil, that adds up to a lot of good history read, digested, watched, thought about and analysed.
I became a historian at the age of nine, when I was given R J Unstead's "People in History". By the time I was ten I knew it more or less off by heart. I was lucky enough to have some excellent teachers at school and at university, who taught me that history is not about learning the past but about studying the past. The best student is not the one who memorises the most facts but the one who thinks most perceptively about the evidence.
These fine teachers also helped me develop as a writer. I learned to choose words with care. Because of the examination system I learned to say a great deal in a few words. In particular I was taught that "good English" is not about applying rules. It is about writing by ear, so as to hear the fluency of sentences; and it is about writing with an active brain, so that one is always thinking about the precise meaning of what one is saying. I was taught that the two greatest sentences in the English language were written by John Donne (in "Death the Leveller") and by John Milton (in "Areopagitica"). I see no reason to disagree. Nevertheless, the best role-model for young historians today is surely George Orwell.
My career took me from North London to Edinburgh. At once I began to read and to teach Scottish history and I seem to possess many score of books on the subject, quite apart from the hundreds read in libraries. All history is interesting, once you know about it. But Scotland's history does seem to be particularly rich - and far too little understood, being befogged by myths. When I am writing my Scottish lectures I imagine an audience of interested visitors to the country. When I am writing my British or European lectures, on the other hand, I imagine an audience of ambitious and interested senior pupils.
There is a story that King George III once visited the great historian Edward Gibbon and found him at work. "Scribble, scribble, scribble Mr Gibbon", said the king. "Another damn great thick book." There is a place for long history books, but there is a place for short ones too. That is the space I hope to occupy.
