Britain must be in trouble! In the spirit of the blitz a lot of serious people, including more than a few of the once great and still good (or at least ermined), gathered deep in the Cabinet War Rooms below Whitehall, risking their health from the underground ventilation, packed in rows of inexpensive folding chairs. They were there to discuss the need to inform policy decisions with some history. Damn, we must think before we act!
What to do? At the very least a centre and a website. I'm for people starting high quality websites and I live with a historian. I welcome History& Policy. I listened to Pat Thane explain the idea was to get policy makers and the media to embrace some historical perspective and historians to write in a way that regular people can comprehend. Far too much policy is made far too fast, she observed, often without any basis in evidence let alone historical.
I couldn't wait for the other speakers, not even David Cannadine on 'Britishness: devolution, evolution and revolution' as I had to leg over to the Middle Temple for the great Carol Stone's Xmas bash. Hopefully we can get a report on David's perspective. I think it is a hopeful sign that academics want to become public intellectuals.
