A note on readership

This informal Guide is aimed first at apprentice historians writing an MA or MPhil dissertation and, especially, at postgraduates studying for a PhD. These travellers on the educational route to becoming historians cannot plausibly be termed ‘beginners’, since they must have considerable skills and knowledge to have got this far. Instead, ‘apprenticeship’ is intended as an affectionate way of signifying that historians work in a craft discipline, in which all are continually learning ‘on the job’.

At the same time, the principles and practice of research are relevant to all people who seek to study the past. It is one of the great strengths of history as a subject – and one of its most distinctive characteristics – that significant contributions may come from ‘freelancers’ working outside the academic world, as well as from specialists within. The route is a shared one. Much of the advice within this Guide accordingly applies to all travellers on the road to becoming historians.

By way of clarification, SIGNPOSTS are provided within each chapter to indicate whether their contents apply chiefly to an academic trackway or to all comers. Many of the research hurdles as well as the research pleasures are shared ones. Historians, as this Guide stresses throughout, are not just found within the academic world. They are potentially everywhere because the past is an open-ended, unstoppable subject that all can study. And a good thing too.