How to be a Historian

How to Write an Essay (Part 1)

Nick Lloyd — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 07:39:29 GMT

Writing essays is a key skill for all kinds of writers, whether you are at school or university, or just want to learn how to approach a topic, engage with a set of ideas, and make a convincing argument. This is the first of a three-part series on how to write essays, in which I give my opinions on what makes a good (or bad) essay, and how you might wish to improve upon your writing skills.

While the ability of AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) to produce essays (or something approaching one) might make one assume that these skills are outdated or irrelevant, nothing could be further from the truth. It is essential to be able to think clearly, to set out your points, and to argue a case - and essays are still the best method of doing this in the arts, humanities and social sciences. LLMs can only take you so far, and although there can be relevant and important uses for this technology, and it can help to jump-start your ideas, spending time crafting your own writing is never wasted and will reap rewards later on.

So how should essays be written and what are some of the common pitfalls?

The Goeben and 'Slaughter, Misery and Ruin'

Nick Lloyd — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 10:11:10 GMT

The chase of the SMS Goeben and Breslau, two German capital ships that found themselves in the Mediterranean in August 1914, was one of the most thrilling - and for the British, most frustrating - events in the opening days of the First World War. After bombarding the ports of Phillippeville and Bône in French North Africa on 4 August - to disrupt the movement of colonial troops to France - the Goeben and Breslau had been ordered to steam to Messina for coaling and to allow emergency repairs on the Goeben’s boilers. But instead of heading for the Strait of Gibraltar and the open sea when their stay in Messina was concluded - as the British and French assumed - the ships slipped away to the south and east, heading for the eastern Mediterranean.

What followed was a desperate pursuit as the British realised that the German ships were still at large and not going into the Atlantic Ocean. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, demanded that the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet…

Are Military Historians Insular?

Nick Lloyd — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 08:44:01 GMT

Military history has not always had the best reputation. It is often accused of being a uniquely problematic area of study: insular and disconnected from wider trends in the historical profession. It is a subject dominated by men and those with a rather distasteful interest in uniforms and helmets, rifles and tanks. Condemned as simple-minded and obsessed over minutia, derided as ‘drum and trumpet’ history, or even worse, too interested in dark corners of the past that should either be condemned or forgotten about entirely, military history has often been treated with an uneasy mixture of outright disdain and barely concealed unease, not only in mainstream academia, but also across public history more generally.

In a review of my latest book in The Spectator, Tessa Dunlop - an historian and media figure - complained that although The Eastern Front was an ‘epic achievement’, ‘military history remains a relatively insular and predominantly male affair’, meaning, I suppose, that whatever…

How to Get Published (with a Major 'Trade Press')

Nick Lloyd — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 07:58:56 GMT

I sometimes get asked by fellow historians or colleagues for advice and information on how to work with a major publisher (what is known in the industry as a ‘trade press’). Academics will often reach a point in their career where they have built up a certain reputation or a body of work, and they feel that they have not received the recognition or impact they might have hoped for. And that is when they start looking around and asking questions about why certain authors appear in the bookshops or why they get reviewed in newspapers or serious online publications. And, sooner or later, they realise that they need to move away from smaller and more niche academic publishers and enter a larger world. It is not for everyone, but if you would like to know how trade presses work, then this post might be for you.

1 July 1916 and the English Imagination

Nick Lloyd — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 06:38:35 GMT

In the novel, Intruder in the Dust, first published in 1948, the American writer, William Faulkner, wrote a brief passage on the strange position that 3 July 1863 – the day of General Pickett’s infamous charge at Gettysburg – held on the southern imagination:

“For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances...”

Faulkner was writing about the desperate hopes that ha…

Why You Should Read Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Nick Lloyd — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 09:58:19 GMT

This Substack is about history and historians. It has never discussed novelists or those who write fiction. The exception to this rule is the Spanish bestselling author and novelist, Arturo Pérez-Reverte. I have read most of his books (at least those which have been translated into English), and several have been read and re-read multiple times, and my favourites, well-thumbed, creased and worn, are stationed in several different rooms in my house, ensuring that I am never too far from them.

Born in Cartagena in 1951, Pérez-Reverte was a journalist and war correspondent before turning to writing full time. His first novel, El húsar, was published in 1986, and he has since written a string of critically acclaimed works, including The Fencing Master, The Flanders Panel, The Club Dumas (usually published in English as The Dumas Club), The Seville Communion and The Nautical Chart. He is also the author of the swashbuckling Captain Alatriste series, which was turned into a feature film in 2…

Reflections on Great Historians: Shelby Foote

Nick Lloyd — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 08:24:44 GMT

The American author, Shelby Foote, was most well-known for his appearance as a ‘talking head’ for Ken Burns in the television miniseries, The Civil War, which was aired on PBS in 1990. Speaking in a memorable southern drawl, Foote’s anecdotal, relaxed style captivated viewers and made him the breakout star of the show. Although primarily known as a novelist, Foote had authored a monumental three-volume history of the Civil War between 1958 and 1974 entitled The Civil War: A Narrative. Spanning 3,000 pages across three volumes and perhaps 1.5 million words, Foote’s epic tome had sold well, if not spectacularly, and much to his chagrin, had been overlooked for notable honours, including the Pulitzer Prize. But when PBS showed the Burns series, Foote’s books were suddenly in great demand, transforming him into one of the most recognisable public figures in America.

Foote being interviewed in his living room by Ken Burns for The Civil War

Foote has always had his detractors. There were thos…

Why AI Can’t Replace Historians

Nick Lloyd — Wed, 20 May 2026 06:40:56 GMT

In July 2025, Microsoft produced a report on ‘The 10 jobs least and most threatened by AI’, which scored the resilience of different occupations to being replaced by artificial intelligence. It scored ‘resilience’ based upon three categories: ‘whether AI is currently being used for that work, how successfully it does so and how much of that occupation’s total work can be done by AI’. Jobs that it classed as primarily ‘dealing with language’ or ‘knowledge work’ were judged highly vulnerable: the first being interpreters and translators, and the second being historians (‘writers and authors’ were also in at number three). The authors of the report were keen to clarify that the study was limited. It asked specific questions about what ‘work activities’ were being undertaken by artificial intelligence and how satisfied users were (and by extension what impact this might have on occupations). Nevertheless, it has raised important questions about the future of historical research and what i…

Reflections on Great Historians: Correlli Barnett

Nick Lloyd — Mon, 04 May 2026 10:36:25 GMT

Correlli ‘Bill’ Barnett’s death at the age of 95 in July 2022 left Britain without one of the most polarizing, but naturally gifted historians she has ever produced. Barnett had been the keeper of the archives at Churchill College, Cambridge, and was the author of at least eighteen books, including The Desert Generals (1960), The Swordbearers: Supreme Command in the First World War (1963), The Collapse of British Power (1972), The Audit of War: The Illusion and Reality of Britain as a Great Nation (1986), and The Verdict of Peace: Britain Between her Yesterday and the Future (1995).

Barnett’s first book, The Desert Generals, was characteristic of his style: direct, punchy, and sparing no-one. The book became infamous for its demolition of the reputation of Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, which has, arguably, never recovered. Barnett showed that other generals who served in North Africa were more gifted than the ‘victor of El Alamein’ and had not benefited from the largesse gr…

Why You Should Read William Manchester

Nick Lloyd — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:41:20 GMT

The historian and journalist, William Manchester, who died in June 2004, was a prolific and gifted writer, who spent most of his career at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Although his work may not have found much acclaim among academic historians or scholars, he was wildly popular amongst the American public at large, who ensured that his books sold extremely well. He was the author of numerous celebrated works, including American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, Disturber of the Peace: The Life of H. L. Mencken, and his account of the Kennedy assassination, The Death of a President, which sold over a million copies. He was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities medal in 2001 by President G.W. Bush.

William Manchester in 1967

Manchester was astonishingly good at writing about men, particularly those whom he saw as having qualities of courage and dedication that should be celebrated. One of his main achievements was The Last Lion, a three-volume life of Winston Churchil…

Was There a ‘Learning Curve’ on the Eastern Front (1914-1917)?

Nick Lloyd — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 13:03:29 GMT

The existence of a ‘learning curve’ in the British Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium between 1914-18 has become an area of significant historical inquiry. Beginning in the late 1980s, a number of historians, including Tim Travers, Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, Peter Simkins and Paddy Griffith, postulated that British forces underwent a significant process of tactical change and evolution on the Western Front – what they termed a ‘learning curve’ or ‘learning process’. This idea of an adaptive army stood in sharp contrast to the predominant narrative of ‘lions led by donkeys’, which had become firmly rooted in the British imagination for at least four decades before this.

This argument has never been applied to the Eastern Front. What little attention has been paid to this theatre of war has tended to be roundly dismissive of any such process and the caricature of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires fighting each other to a mutual stalemate, with mass infantry attacks prod…

Introduction

Nick Lloyd — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 12:20:25 GMT

Hi, I’m Nick.

I am an English historian. I have written six books, had a couple of bestsellers along the way, and you can find my Amazon page here. This is a place where I offer my thoughts on the history that I write and the topics that I am interested in. I will also cover historians, the historical profession, and the craft of both academic and non-fiction writing more generally. If you are interested in my work or want to know more about how a historian approaches writing, and how they think about structure and style, then this Substack might be of interest to you. It will include essays on my subject matter, and that concerns both war and empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but it will, more often than not, be about the practice of history writing.

A secondary reason for having a Substack is to create a place for material that would have no other way of being published. As any author will know, there are various pieces of work, short articles, notes, drafts and other ephemera, that never see the light of day. For one reason or another, they are discarded or never fully developed, or the publications that you thought might be interested in them, turn out not to be. They will now be published on my Substack. I will also be starting a ‘Reflections on Great Historians’ and ‘Why You Should Read’ series that will examine some of my favourite writers and tell you why they are so special.

Thanks for reading.

Photo by Daria Kraplak on Unsplash