The Voice of the Past: Oral History

In this revised edition, Paul Thompson argues that oral history can help to create a truer picture of the past, documenting the lives and feeling of all kinds of people, and that its value has been neglected by conventional historians. The effect of collecting oral evidence, he claims, can be to bind together communities and promote contact between generations. The development of oral history is traced through its past and into the future, demonstrating how it can be evaluated alongside the traditional sources of history to construct a more democratic record of the past. There is a new chapter on "Memory and the self" examining the therapeutic value of reminiscence.