Properly understood, social history, local history and historiography are closely interconnected and benefit from the dialectical relationships which help bind them together. The actual topics and individual chapters gathered together in this book are chronologically wide-ranging, but are demonstrably linked by methodological common denominators and common threads in their northern and southern settings. All the essays are squarely based on new research and all reach outwards, as well as inwards. All are problem solving and all display a vigorous methodology at work. Some re-visit well-known historians and subjects such as W.G. Hoskins and Joan Thirsk and the Oxford English Dictionary. Others, like the essays on John Milner and G.H. Tupling make a convincing case for resurrecting the neglected or forgotten.