Studying history as a Christian

I have been fascinated by History for as long as I can remember. There are a number of different reasons why I find the study of the past so interesting and why I recommend History at GCSE, A-Level, and at university.

The first is that people are interesting! Exploring how they lived, how they thought, the kind of societies they built, is intriguing. As we do this, we are challenged to recognise both the similarities and differences that characterise them and us, and why this is so. There is always something both familiar and strange in those we study. As J.P. Hartley wrote in the novel The Go-Between, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” Discovering the extent of this similarity and difference is extraordinarily interesting.