How Good an Historian Shall I be?

R.G. Collingwood's name is known to history educators around the world yet few have charted the depths of his ideas on what it means to be educated in history. In this book Marnie Hughes-Warrington begins with the aspects of Collingwood's work best known to educators - re-enactment and the historical imagination - and locates them in the widening philosophical contexts of his and other writer's views on empathy, sympathy, imagination, education and civilisation. Revealed are dynamic concepts of the a priori imagination and history education that play a vital role in the achievement of an 'historical civilisation'. This is an end Collingwood wants all of us to achieve, thus making the question' How good an historian shall I be?' one of the most important we can ask.