S.B. from Manchester
THE writing of history has undergone an amazing transformation since the days when Macaulay and Gibbon rolled out their sonorous periods, and since that more recent era When painstaking historians subordinated their science to that of economics, archaeology, ethnology, anthropology or any other that chose to invade the field. The change to the newer style of history, which uses a vast knowledge of the period and its most ephemeral social modes to etch a speaking likeness of a real man, is the work of two men - Mr. Guedalla and Mr. Lytton Strachey. This evening Mr. Guedalla, the author of 'The Second Empire,' 'Palmerston,' 'A Gallery' and 'Independence Day,' will explain his views on the writing of history, which have been so often and so virulently attacked, especially by historians of the academic school. As a speaker whose brilliance has been undisputed ever since he was President, of the Union at Oxford, he has every opportunity of making out a convincing case.