# The History Man {#the-history-man .reader-title}
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6--8 minutes
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| First edition | |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| Author | Malcolm Bradbury |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| Cover artist | Francisco Goya\ |
| | *Dog Buried in Sand*^\[1\]^ |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| Language | English |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| Publisher | Secker & Warburg |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| Publication date | 1975 |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| Media type | Print & Audio |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| Pages | 240 |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| ISBN | 0-436-06502-9 |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
: The History Man
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'*The History Man'* is a campus novel by Malcolm Bradbury published in
1975. His best-known novel, it is a satire of academic life in the
\"glass and steel\" universities, the ones established in the 1960s
which followed the \"redbricks\". In 1981 the book was made into a
successful BBC television serial.
The New Zealander Ian Carter was so outraged by the book\'s portrait of
sociology and sociologists that he was inspired to write *Ancient
Cultures of Conceit: British University Fiction in the Post War Years*,
a sociological examination of British academic
novels.^\[*[citation\ needed]{title="This claim needs references to reliable sources. (March 2026)"}*\]^
Howard Kirk is a lecturer in sociology at the local university. He is a
\"theoretician of sociability\". The Kirks are trendy leftist people but
living together for many years and the advance of middle age have left
unfavourable traces in their relationship. It is Barbara Kirk who
notices this change, whereas Howard is as enthusiastic and self-assured
as always. Officially, the Kirks oppose traditional gender roles just as
fiercely as the exploitation of humans by other humans. Practices have
crept into their lives, which do not live up to such high standards,
Howard writes books, while Barbara---stranded with much of the housework
and two little children---would like to but never gets round to it. Any
female student who comes to live with---rather than work for---them is
made to babysit and perform domestic chores.
When Howard and Barbara meet in their third year at the University of
Leeds, Howard is a virgin. They are religious, working-class and during
their student years cannot afford more than the bare necessities of
life. A few years after their graduation, in the summer of 1963, the
\"old Kirks\", already a married couple living in a small bedsit,
metamorphose into the \"new Kirks\" when one day, while Howard is at the
university where he works as a lecturer, Barbara has spontaneous, casual
sex with an Egyptian student. This fling triggers a series of events.
When he has got over the shock, Howard begins to associate with all
kinds of radical people. The Kirks make many new friends. They smoke pot
at parties, Barbara develops a new interest in health food and
astrology, Howard grows a beard and they both start having \"small
affairs\". When Barbara gets pregnant, rather than cancelling his class,
Howard takes his students to the clinic to watch his wife giving birth.
Finally, in 1967, he is appointed lecturer at Watermouth and right from
the start he is intent on radicalising that bourgeois town, especially
the new university, an institution that he describes as \'a place I can
work against\'.
The novel chronicles a term in the lives of Howard and Barbara.
Howard\'s intolerance concerning non-Marxist, especially conservative,
thinking makes him persecute one of the male participants of his seminar
who wears a university blazer and a tie (which make him look like a
student from the 1950s) and insists on being allowed to present his
paper in the traditional, formal way, without being interrupted and
without having to answer questions before he has finished his train of
thought. In front of the others Howard calls him a \"heavy, anal type\"
and what he has prepared for class \"an anal, repressed paper\", without
considering his hypocrisy. Kirk succeeds in having the student, a
\"historical irrelevance\", expelled from the university.
Whereas Howard selects his many sexual partners from among the people
who work at the university (students as well as faculty members) on
Saturday mornings, Barbara Kirk regularly goes on \"shopping trips\" to
London to visit the same young man. The Kirks consider the parties they
throw in their house a success if at least some of their guests have sex
in the many rooms they provide for it. At one point in the novel,
Howard\'s promiscuity gets him into trouble when he is told that he
might be sacked for \"gross moral turpitude\" (which he defines to a
female student of his as \"raping large numbers of nuns\") but he shrugs
off this accusation as being based on \"a very vague concept, especially
these days\".
A number of supporting characters round off the vivid picture of the
permissive society of the early 1970s. There is Henry Beamish, one of
Howard\'s colleagues whose childless middle-class marriage to Myra has
been largely unhappy. There is Dr. Macintosh, a sociologist from
Howard\'s department who, despite his pregnant wife, can be convinced by
Howard that having sex with one of his students during the end-of-term
party is the right thing to do. Flora Beniform is a social psychologist
with rather unconventional research methods: she sleeps with men in whom
she is professionally interested to elicit information.
At the end of the novel Howard and Barbara are still together and all
their friends admire their stable yet \"advanced\" marriage. Howard has
even further metamorphosed into \"the radical hero\" who is \"generating
the onward march of mind, the onward process of history\". According to
his philosophy, things, especially those he likes, are bound to happen:
this is called \"historical inevitability\". The trajectory of the
Kirks\' life together ends when Barbara attempts suicide during a party.
<div>
# Critical discussion {#Critical_discussion}
\[edit\]
</div>
- Ian Carter *Ancient Cultures of Conceit: British University Fiction
in the Post War Years* Routledge and Kegan Paul (1990)
- Lodge, David (1992) \"Staying on the Surface\", pp. 117--120 in his
*The Art of Fiction* (Penguin).
- In his collection of short literary commentaries, *Where was Rebecca
Shot?* by John Sutherland
A four-part adaptation of *The History Man* was broadcast by the BBC in
1981.^\[2\]^ Antony Sher played Howard Kirk and Geraldine James his wife
Barbara; Isla Blair played Flora Beniform. Exteriors for the series were
shot at the University of Lancaster and in Bristol. At the end, there is
a caption stating that in the 1979 general election Howard Kirk voted
Conservative.
- David Lodge\'s novels, in particular *The British Museum Is Falling
Down* and *How Far Can You Go?*
- David Mamet\'s play *Oleanna*, where roles are reversed.
- Philip Larkin\'s poem \"Annus Mirabilis\" (Year of Wonder)
<div>
1. ['\^' \"The Dog (1820-1823) by Francisco Goya -- Artchive\".
Retrieved 7 August
2024.[]{title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=unknown&rft.btitle=The+Dog+%281820-1823%29+by+Francisco+Goya+%E2%80%93+Artchive&rft_id=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.artchive.com%2Fartwork%2Fthe-dog-francisco-goya-1820-1823%2F&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AThe+History+Man"}]{#cite_note-1}
2. ['\^' \"BFI Screenonline: History Man, The (1981)\". BFI
Screenonline. Retrieved 7 August 2024.]{#cite_note-2}
</div>
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