The Local Historian and its predecessor The Amateur Historian have been published since 1952. The complete contents up to and including Volume 29 can be seen in Unlocking the Past: Index and Abstracts 1952 – 1999, revealing the wealth of information and ideas contained in these pages.

The journal published the work of both professional and amateur local historians while the subject developed from what might be described as its antiquarian origins to the wide-ranging and exciting activities of today. Browsing through the years allows reflection on the way the methodology has changed, on the expansion of accessibility to sources and the demands this has made on repositories, and on the variety of people involved, particularly the dramatic growth of family historians.

Unlocking the Past has an introduction by Lionel Munby, and the book includes the abstracts on CDRom, this can be seen in more detail on our publications page.

The cumulative abstracts of subsequent volumes of The Local Historian can be found below.