English and History

English and history is a partnership that rewards the student who wants to understand how language, literature, and historical context are inseparable. The questions that drive the combination are genuine and important: what is the relationship between a piece of literature and the time it was written in? How are writers affected by their political, social, and economic circumstances?

What influence do literary texts have on social and cultural life? How do we read the past through the texts it produced, and how do those texts shape how the past is understood? Studying both disciplines together allows you to hold these questions in productive tension.

At Queen Mary University of London, this four-year programme gives you the opportunity to link the social and political history of different periods with their literary texts, developing both the close reading skills of literary analysis and the archival, interpretive, and argumentative skills of the historian. You will study across a range of periods and traditions in both English literature and history, developing a genuinely interdisciplinary sensibility that enriches your engagement with both subjects. The combination develops strong research, writing, and critical thinking skills that are broadly applicable across many careers.

Graduates from English and history programmes go on to careers in journalism, publishing, education, the civil service, heritage and archives, broadcasting, communications, law, and the creative industries. The combination of close reading, historical contextualisation, and analytical writing the degree develops is valuable wherever the ability to interpret, research, and communicate complex material is required. Many graduates pursue postgraduate study in English literature, history, cultural studies, journalism, or law, and doctoral research in either discipline is a route taken by those who wish to pursue academic careers.