Name
Dr. Andrea Ruddick
College
Pembroke College
What is your field of history?
Late medieval British political and cultural history, especially English national identity.
How did you come to specialise in this area?
Fascination with Arthurian myths and medieval Lego castle as a child(!).
This possibly over-romanticised view of the middle ages led me to choose mostly medieval options when I studied History at Cambridge, as I hadn’t had the opportunity to do it at school. I loved it, and the excellent teaching in this period at Cambridge then encouraged me to specialise further in British medieval history in a final-year dissertation, and then the M.Phil in Medieval History, a masters degree which you can do after you finish your undergraduate course. I’ve stayed in the middle ages ever since!
What sort of source material do you tend to use, and what are its strengths and weaknesses?
1) English government documents (mainly in The National Archives) from the 13-15th centuries.
Strengths: large quantities of material, easy access, consistent records over long periods of time.
Weaknesses: large quantities of material(!), content tends to be quite formulaic, only offers an official perspective.
2) Chronicles, poetry and other literary material from the same period.
Strengths: insight into alternatives to governmental viewpoint, and great variety of material. It is also possible to identify many authors and often readership as well.
Weaknesses: relatively narrow, elite readership (i.e. only the most important social groups read these things), so they don’t tell us much about the ‘popular’ perspective.
Which individuals, events or forces are especially important in your area of history?
The conquest of Wales by Edward I between 1282 and 1284; the so-called ‘Great Cause’ (the succession crisis in Scotland in the late 1280s and early 1290s) and English claims to overlordship of Scotland, 1290-96; the spread of literacy in the fourteenth century, at the same time as a broadening of political society in England; narrowing definitions of subject-hood in the fifteenth century; the Hundred Years War with France.
How has your field developed over the course of your career?
Greater development of ‘British history’, i.e. placing the history of England in the wider context of the British Isles as a whole, looking at it from a less Anglocentric point of view.
More analysis of ‘political culture’ and a greater appreciation of the role of ideas and principles in medieval English politics.
Which areas of your field most urgently need further exploration?
The whole field of medieval English identity has been dominated by literary historians looking at a narrow range of texts, mainly in the English language. This is where my own work, using official documents in Latin and French, comes in… This simply hasn’t been looked at enough to date. We also need to find creative ways of investigating the so far elusive views of the wider population, who have left fewer traces in the surviving sources.
What characterises good history?
A non-patronising, nuanced view of the outlook and perspectives of people living in the past.
Clear, unpretentious writing that seeks to clarify rather than obscure things for the reader.
Careful, contextualised reading of the sources.
How did your understanding of history change during your time as a university student?
I realised that historians often disagree with one another, and that each generation of historians brings their own particular prejudices, preoccupations and values to their interpretation of the past. ‘History’ is not just about objective facts, and a history book will often tell you as much about its writer as it will about the past.
Where should somebody interested in your area of history go for further information?
Not 'Braveheart'! But if you like films, try to get hold of a copy of Vincent Ward’s brilliant film, ‘Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey’, which is a vivid, moving and sympathetic portrayal of the middle ages, set during the Black Death.
Fiction: Sharon Penman’s historical novels are very well-researched, using original sources, especially her trilogy on the Welsh princes. Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, if you fancy something a bit more high-brow (the film isn’t bad either!).
Non-fiction: Helen Castor, Blood and Roses about the history of a gentry family during the Wars of the Roses is a very readable but scholarly starting-point on the 15th century.
Complement this with Christine Carpenter’s textbook, The Wars of the Roses, for an up-to-date, conceptually clear take on the events and historiography of the same period.
For a basic outline of the late 13th-14th centuries., see M. Prestwich, The Three Edwards. For a more British perspective, try R. R. Davies, The First English Empire: Power and Identity in the British Isles, 1093-1343.
For entertaining original source material, try Froissart’s Chroniques (Chronicles), published in English by Penguin (edited & translated by J. Joliffe).
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