If you had the misfortune to do too much, or the wrong kind of it at school, you’ll probably remember one thing about history: how dull it can sometimes be. You might harbour painful memories of the Hundred Years’ War, the War of the Spanish Succession, crop rotation in the Middle Ages or – especially painful – the good deeds of Florence Nightingale.
As a result, it wouldn’t be surprising if – nowadays – you tended to steer well clear of the whole topic. But that would be a huge loss. The real reason why history is often so boring is that we’re not clear enough about what it should be for. Here is one big reason why history matters: it matters because it can provide us with solutions to many of the problems of the present.
At its best, history is there to introduce us to some of the things we need but that aren’t sufficiently visible in the world today. As a society, we’re obsessed by what we’re up to right now. Unknowingly, we’re hugely biased towards the present. The news – which is about the most prestigious force in the world today – circles obsessively around some of the things that have happened in the last five minutes.
And yet, many of the most important things that we need to nourish, sustain and inspire us are a lot older. What we need above all else are good ideas in a range of areas that challenge us – and history is full of them
