Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.

History is always a relationship between the present and the past and the meaning of the past shifts as values and events change in the present. In this article Anne Llewellyn and Helen Snelson use a fascinating individual search for the meaning of a family past to get pupils thinking about the complex interactions of time, identity, meaning and values. They use psychology to explore meaning-making in history and show us how we can help pupils explore ideas about diversity and significance by asking questions about remembering and forgetting.