Revisiting the history degree

Something which always fascinated me during my history degree was the inter-war years in the 20th century. Primarily my interest was focused on the run up to the Second World War.

I took my dissertation course at the amazing Menzies Centre. I focused on a short period of history – looking at Stanley Bruce, High Commissioner to London, and the appeasement and rearmament debate. It was an interesting way to research the build up to war. What has attracted my interest since is the assumption in many cultural references that everyone knew that war was inevitable during the late ’30s. I wonder how accurate this is, as sometimes it feels as though perhaps its glossed over as a historic note as it works well with the story arc of the play, film or novel.

I’m hoping to do some more research into the diplomacy of the time, returning to the research I did for my dissertation. In the intervening time a lot has been published, which I’ve been trying to catch up on as much as I can. It’ll take quite some time to re-group my history research techniques, but it’s a challenge I’m so far enjoying. I’m hoping to learn some more about the experience of the time, what contemporaries thought and the different trends in historical analysis since. I’ll endeavour to update as I go along, and hopefully post some book reviews and links to interesting resources. It’ll be exciting to see what resources are available online now, as digitisation of archive material was growing whilst I was studying, and that was a good few years ago now…

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