English and History

English and history is a pairing that asks you to bring two complementary sets of intellectual skills to bear on the question of how the past has been experienced, represented, and understood. English trains you in the close reading of literary texts, developing your sensitivity to how language constructs meaning and your ability to write and argue with clarity and precision. History teaches you to evaluate evidence, to situate events and ideas in their cultural and social contexts, and to construct well-reasoned accounts of how things came to be as they are.

Together, the two disciplines explore the relationship between literary texts and the historical worlds that produced them, and what that relationship reveals about both.

At Royal Holloway this three-year full-time programme offers an intellectually challenging combination, allowing you to explore literary texts and their historical contexts in ways that each discipline enriches. You will study English literature across a wide range of periods and genres alongside the methods and concerns of historical scholarship, developing the research, analytical, and writing skills that both fields reward. A sandwich year and a year abroad are incorporated into the programme, and a work placement is built in, giving you significant professional and international experience alongside your academic studies.

Graduates from English and history go on to careers in teaching, journalism, publishing, heritage, archiving, the civil service, law, broadcasting, and a wide range of other roles that value careful reading, clear thinking, and strong written communication. The combination of historical understanding and literary sensitivity is particularly well suited to roles in cultural organisations, education, and any context where engaging with the past in its full complexity is important. Many graduates also continue to postgraduate study in English, history, or related disciplines, pursuing research or specialist professional paths.