Should we study history to search for lessons it might teach or to discern its relevance to our own preoccupations? What were earlier generations of historians trying to convey in their institutions or through wider instruction? Beyond a chronicle of past events, does history have meaning?

In this episode of Black’s History Week, The Critic‘s political editor, Graham Stewart, talks to Professor Jeremy Black, author of Contesting History and Clio’s Battles, about whether the past can be a servant to the present.

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