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Defining social history is never easy, just as splitting the hairs of Clio’s raiment is hard to avoid. In the halcyon days of the 1960s and early 1970s, expansion, proliferation and subdivision were the order of the day, in history as in most other subjects. And of this development, social history was the prime beneficiary. But now retrenchment is upon us; in history as in everything else, amalgamation and rationalisation are in the ascendant; and there are fears that social history, having gained most in the era of expansion, will now suffer most in the age of austerity.It seems possible, yet unlikely. For social history is surely easier to defend than to define. And in any case, the best social history, whatever it is, is always more than merely that, and it, most illustrious practitioners rightly spend more time doing it than defining it. Considering the fate of Trevelyan’s misunderstood definition one can hardly blame them. We would be well advised to follow their example, and get on with it.David Cannadine is Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, and editor of Politicians, Power and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Towns (Leicester University Press, 1982).