A LOCAL HISTORIAN OF GENIUS AND THE REALISATION OF HIS THEME

This celebration of the central achievement of the late W. G. Hoskins, Professor Emeritus of English History at the University of Leicester, concentrates on the organising principles behind his most influential writing as a local historian. An attempt is made to understand the manner in which his Leicestershire interests in particular were integrated into a wider historical perspective, not only as a result of contemporary intellectual and historiographical influences, but also because of his own personal identification with a dying provincial culture. In the process it is hoped to demonstrate that it is misleading to see Hoskins primarily as a landscape historian. Rather, his was a concern for the whole human condition at local levels