This blog is written by IHR Fellow Lisa Pine, host of A Historian’s Life.
Podcasts are ubiquitous—so many hosts, fascinating guests and stories, on topics ranging from sports to astronomy, and everything in between. And there are many excellent history podcasts, including The Rest is History, We Have Ways and BBC History Extra to name but a few. History is thriving in the podcasting arena. But as a historian myself, I have been intrigued about the idea of hosting a podcast series that is a little different, one that explores the lives and careers of the historians themselves. Rather than just talking about a single historical event, this podcast series looks into the experiences of leading historians who research, teach and shape our understanding of the past. It’s a bit like the Radio 4 programme Life Scientific—but for historians. In my new podcast series, A Historian’s Life, we hear how leading historians have built their careers, what they have written about, what challenges they have faced, and how they reflect on their professional journeys.
Becoming a Fellow at the IHR in 2022, I was keen to become involved in the work of the Institute and to become an active member of the community here. One of the projects I have developed—with the help and encouragement of both my lovely colleague, Vanessa Rockel, and the ever-supportive IHR Director, Claire Langhamer—is the podcast series, A Historian’s Life. My association with the IHR has given me the right platform to create something I had been mulling over for a while: a podcast series that allows us to listen to historians telling their stories. It has been a project quite long in the making because, although I listen to a lot of podcasts on a whole variety of subjects and have appeared as a guest on some too, I had no experience of hosting them. I had to learn the ropes: understanding how to construct a podcast, how to frame a proposed script and develop the questions. For his advice and assistance in this process, I would like to thank my friend and enthusiastic podcaster, as well as Professor of Plant Molecular Biology at Ben Gurion University, Simon Barak.
One of the first things we needed to do was to decide on the perfect theme music for this podcast. After much deliberation, we chose the first movement of Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4. It’s lively, commanding, and perfectly encapsulates the energy and intellectual vigour that we want this podcast to embody. Next came the selection of guests—no easy feat, considering the calibre of historians that we wanted to feature. I am very pleased to say that we received an overwhelmingly positive response to our invitations. We have been delighted to record the podcast interviews in person here at the IHR, especially given that three of our first four guests live outside the UK and we were able to coordinate the interviews with visits they were making to London. In-person interviews also added a wonderful natural intimacy to the conversations that would have been harder to achieve online, so we have been very pleased that we were able to conduct the interviews in this way.
Our guests are esteemed historians with a variety of professional experiences and research expertise, starting with Richard Overy, one of Britain’s leading historians on the Second World War, and a valued colleague that I have worked with and known for many years. I am very grateful to Richard, because he said yes straightaway, and he is such an important choice and voice to have as our first guest. Of course, after that, it was easy to invite other leading historians, some of whom I know personally, and some of whom I knew only by reputation before the interview. My second guest was Margot Finn, who related to me her experience as president of the Royal Historical Society. My third guest was Rana Mitter, who told me all about his media work and acting as a judge for a prestigious history book prize. And I was delighted to welcome Simon Schama, who talked about the broadcasting side of his career, the power of storytelling, as well as discussing several of his books.
In addition to having a conversation with each of them about some of their major publications, I asked my guests a variety of other questions, including what advice they would give to someone starting out in the profession today. Their wisdom and the insights they shared are definitely worth hearing. We have worked hard to keep the interviews as authentic and unfiltered as possible. This means that rather than over-editing or scripting every word, we have deliberately left in the pauses. These are not intended to be polished monologues—they are real, thoughtful conversations, in which you get to hear the guests think about and discuss their careers and consider their responses to my questions.
I am looking forward to interviewing another round of guests in the next few months, so we will be releasing several more podcasts to the series later in 2025. I am honoured and privileged to undertake this project with the IHR so that we have this collection of historians’ voices in-house. Even though, of course, these historians have shared their thoughts in many places, it’s especially meaningful to preserve their voices here in the IHR’s archive for future generations, along with those of the earlier series of 18 interviews with historians, Making History, and the IHR’s Interviews with Historians video series. We have created a space here for historians to reflect on their careers and inspire the next generation of scholars. I have been delighted by the positive and enthusiastic response I received from our invited guests to take part, and I hope that you will agree, when you listen, that we have had some fascinating conversations.
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