The Local Historian

The Local Historian contains articles and features for the general reader that may be of a wide, perhaps national, application or may reflect a local subject.

There is emphasis on applying principles and methods to local research and study, so that you can benefit from the work of others. Family historians can learn about the local world in which their forebears lived and worked. There are extensive reviews and lists of publications.

Published in January, April, July and October.

Back Issues

Issues published within the last three years can be purchased for £5.00 each (subject to availability). Members have access to downloadable copies of these issues.

Issues older than three years are available for download free of charge.

Temporary suspension of the paywall

During the pandemic, all back issues (excluding the latest issue) were made available free to view. This benefit to the wider local history community remains in effect until further notice.

Why BALH?

Nick Barratt Historian and Author

Supporting your academic research

There is an increasing interest in local history as a key element of academic studies – not just the content that has been published by local historians over the decades as a key research resource, but also in co-produced projects. Grant-awarding bodies such as the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) have placed an increasing emphasis on collaborations and partnerships when considering the award of research funding, and BALH provides the perfect platform for academic researchers to locate key groups and ongoing activity.

Nick Barratt, Historian and Author

Meet the team

Iain Taylor Trustee and Treasurer

Iain Taylor

Having recently retired from a career in corporate media and public relations, I was honoured to be asked to be Treasurer of BALH as of 1 January 2019. I graduated in history from Exeter University in 1980 but part of me always regretted not having done any postgraduate work. Becoming self employed in 2002 also gave the time to complete an MRes in Cultural History at Goldsmiths, University of London, which was most enjoyable, and I was able to take a PhD at Royal Holloway a few years later. My thesis was on Early Modern Bible Commentaries (an important source thus far completely overlooked by both historians and theologians) and I was very fortunate to have the outstanding Prof Justin Champion as my supervisor. During that time I wrote several articles and gave a number of academic papers and I was subsequently asked to become the Secretary of the Christianity & History Forum.

After that David Killingray encouraged me to become more active in writing articles on local history in general and the Sevenoaks area (where I lived until very recently) in the long nineteenth century in particular. So far I have had articles published in peer-reviewed journals on the lengthy struggle to put in place the West Kent public drainage system; the personal and social dislocation resulting from the mismanagement and collapse of smaller local friendly societies; the reasons some Sevenoaks farmers in particular were targeted during the earliest stage of the 'Captain Swing' riots of 1830-31; and the idiosyncratic ways in which one local tenant farmer pursued his campaign, against leading members of the West Kent aristocracy, to end the Extraordinary Tithe in the 1880s.

One of the key factors linking this body of work is risk - who assumes it and why, and how and when those people might seek to transfer it onto other groups or individuals better able to bear it, either willingly or unwillingly. Risk is also the meta-theme of a new book on nineteenth century Sevenoaks David and I have just completed and which we hope to have published by the end of 2019. I hope my business background will allow me to bring some additional commercial and marketing expertise to BALH in future.

Iain Taylor, Trustee and Treasurer