History and Creative Writing

Study with a top History department and be taught from the cutting edge of historical research. Learn to think and write imaginatively about the past with our colleagues in Creative Writing.

Our BA History and/with Creative Writing gives you the opportunity to study two subjects that will help you to hone the investigative skills of the historian, while developing your writing style.

Through our diverse and inclusive History curriculum you will learn about an array of cultures and identities. What links our work is our focus on people’s history and everyday lives. This is represented strongly in our first year programme, which will give you an insight into the making of the modern world through exploration of faith, magic and medicine, campaigns for freedom and equality, Africa and the world, and America from Hamilton to Trump.

Throughout your degree, the common link between the two disciplines will be your analysis and interpretation of texts. As historians you will learn to analyse historical documents and debates among historians, while in Creative Writing you’ll explore published texts, breaking them down to examine writing techniques.

The art of writing, honed over the course of your Creative Writing studies, will benefit you in the final year of History if you choose to write a dissertation. This extended piece of work will grow out of a topic that interests you. There is also the option in Creative Writing of workshoping an idea, which, by the time you graduate, will have developed into a solid piece of work that you can continue working on or submit for publication. Maybe one of your history modules will inspire you to write a historical novel!