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This article surveys the debates over UK public policy for open access (OA) since 2012 from the perspective of scholars in the humanities. It isolates points in Research Council and REF policy that have come under criticism from the humanities community for their basis in science practice, and assesses the progress that has been made in addressing these concerns. Issues considered include ‘gold’ and ‘green’ models of OA, the role of university managers in determining where and what academics can publish, embargo periods and licensing. The author is President of the Royal Historical Society.

The serious non-fiction paperback was one of the principal vehicles for the distribution of expert knowledge in the mid 20th century. This paper examines the market for serious non-fiction in both the US and the UK between the 1930s and the 1960s, by looking at the market leaders in the two countries, Pelican and Mentor Books, published by Penguin and New American Library respectively. It argues that novel modes of distribution and acts of selection by authors, publishers and readers constituted a process of the co-production of knowledge that problematizes views of mid-century expertise as expressions of governmentality. Different patterns of distribution and market demand in the two countries shed further light on who read, what they read and for what purpose.

It is not emphasized enough that the progress of historiography often proceeds, not by historians arguing and then coming to some resolution, but simply by moving on. Historiography follows fashion, and subjects often exhaust themselves (for the time being). A related issue is that of siloes. Historiography -- academic writing generally -- takes place within communities, often quite rigidly demarcated. Both of these issues have affected the history of education in modern Britain. Since the late nineteenth century, the British state has developed a very extensive apparatus of mostly free, often compulsory education. Over time all children and many young adults were drawn into its web.

It is probably in the nature of manifestos to be one-eyed and just a little authoritarian: they are rallying cries to lead soldiers into battle. For that reason, history is a subject almost uniquely ill-suited to manifestos. Historians are not soldiers; they don't fight on a single front, and--at a time when, more than ever before, historians have been operating in an impressive diversity of modes and theaters--they certainly don't need to be led in one direction. In their critique, Cohen and Mandler do not dispute the validity of Guldi and Armitage's favored modes of historiography. The latter have both worked in a variety of time scales (long, short, and medium). They view quantitative and digital methods as useful tools in the historian's repertoire and use them in their own practice (as well as in this critique). They are entirely in favor of the social engagement of scholars outside the academy.

The serious non-fiction paperback was one of the principal vehicles for the distribution of expert knowledge in the mid 20th century. This paper examines the market for serious non-fiction in both the US and the UK between the 1930s and the 1960s, by looking at the market leaders in the two countries, Pelican and Mentor Books, published by Penguin and New American Library respectively. It argues that novel modes of distribution and acts of selection by authors, publishers and readers constituted a process of the co-production of knowledge that problematizes views of mid-century expertise as expressions of governmentality. Different patterns of distribution and market demand in the two countries shed further light on who read, what they read and for what purpose.

This address asks how much has education contributed to social mobility in post-war Britain and considers other factors that may have contributed as much or more: labour-market opportunities, trends in income inequality, gender differences and ‘compositional effects’ deriving from the shape of the occupational hierarchy. Even where these other factors proved much more powerful – especially labour-market opportunities and compositional effects – democratic discourse both among politicians and among the electorate remained fixated on educational opportunities and outcomes, especially after the decline of the Croslandite critique of ‘meritocracy’. That fixation has if anything been reinforced by the apparent end to a ‘golden age’ of absolute upward mobility for large sections of the population, not necessarily because education is an effective antidote but because the alternative political solutions are so unpalatable both to politicians and to voters.