Herbert Butterfield and the Study of History

Abstract

In 1931 Herbert Butterfield, precisely as old as the century, published a short book entitled The whig interpretation of history. It made him famous, and for the next forty years or so he stood forth as one of the leading voices in the profession. His voluminous writings in books and essays were read avidly by schoolmasters and their pupils, by students and – less regularly – by dons; to a wide range of educated and reflective people not themselves historians he represented the voice of history in England. He added a further dimension to his image when singlehandedly and with considerable courage he engaged the then dominant Namierite school of eighteenth-century studies; though he cannot be said to have triumphed in that battle, he emerged from it with honour and with the satisfaction of having been able to crack the crystalline selfregard of the opposing party in several places. Those who knew only the voice, on paper at that, were liable to be profoundly disconcerted when they encountered him: no whitebearded old testament prophet after all, preaching stern simplicities, but a clean-shaven (often somewhatrazored) man permanently about thirty-five years old, brisk, cheerful, responsive, entertaining, variously chain-smoking or sworn off cigarettes altogether, always courteous, never pompous. It might be thought that today, less than four years after his death, it is yet too early to venture upon an assessment of his achievement, but it seems to me desirable that the task should be attempted by one who still remembers the famous Butterfield giggle while reading the Butterfield writings. My own special qualification, I would claim, lies in the fact that I knew him but not all that closely and did not belong to his circle (which tended to be based on Peterhouse); in thirty years of sharing the same history faculty with him I do not remember ever once seriously talking history with him.

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