I see it as my job to try to make history to be a popular thing. The longer I keep going the less weird it will be to be a female historian.
Lucy WorsleyRead
There's a big mistake that people make with history, which is to think that people in the past were just like us, but wearing crinolines. They lived in different worlds.
Interpretation
People often mistakenly believe that historical figures were just like modern individuals, overlooking their unique contexts and perspectives.
Lucy Worsley's quote highlights the misconception that people from the past shared the same thoughts, feelings, and experiences as people today. While they may have similar human traits, the environments, cultures, and societal norms of their times greatly influenced their lives and decisions, thus they cannot be judged by modern standards or perspectives.
In practice
During a history class, to emphasize the importance of understanding the social context of historical events.
I see it as my job to try to make history to be a popular thing. The longer I keep going the less weird it will be to be a female historian.
My ideal viewer is an 11-year-old girl who, like me, was once reading a book by Jean Plaidy and might be in the position of deciding what to make of the world and what to do with her life.
One thing 'not right' on the 50th anniversary of the Selma marches is the sad fact that the Edmund Pettus Bridge hasn't been renamed the John Lewis Bridge.
The rise of African nations concurrent with the spread of the Nation of Islam and the civil rights movement gave black America a burst of pride over and above anything they had had since the decline of the movement of Marcus Garvey.
Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, he began at the moment that it broke out, believing that it would be a great war, and more memorable than any that had preceded it.
Hitler was no inexorable product of a German 'special path', no logical culmination of long-term trends in specifically German culture and ideology. Nor was he a mere 'accident' in the course of German history.
Use it, enjoy it, but always handle history with care.
History must give the Poles the principal credit for bringing the Soviet bloc to its knees.
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