‘Hi George. Let me ask my leading historians ...'

Reflecting on the continuing problem of students holding an impoverished understanding of the value or ‘uses' of history, Steve Rollett turned his attention to the question of analogy. He took the axiom to which students make common appeal (‘we can learn from mistakes in the past') and set about trying to help them see that while this is true up to a point, it is all rather more complicated than this. Also, history has more to offer than some simple practical utility. Rollett asked his students to deconstruct an analogy, to consider its strengths and weaknesses for illuminating a situation in the more recent past. Placing his students in role as ‘historian-advisers' to Tony Blair, he asked them to consider how far an analogy drawn between 1930s appeasement and the idea of ‘appeasing' Saddam Hussein could be construed to be valid.