There is a hint of Thatcherism about this New History, with its queer fondness for dates. For Number Ten it was, wearing her metahistorian's hat, who recently ordered dates back into the curriculum, as the sine qua non of history. But surely not of literary history, which is parsimonious over dates, save where it measures out for us the life-spans of authors. Literary historians like to gather time into innocuous folds, as decades, centuries, or 'ages', rather than brave it in its mortal, year-on-year extension. The New History is more candidly historical: it records the passing years at the head of each page.

LRB 8 February 1990 | PDF Download