The arrival of sources of evidence into secondary school history classrooms amounted to a small revolution. What began as a radical development is now establishment orthodoxy, with both GCSE and now National Curriculum in England and Wales enshrining its principles. Tony McAleavy pays tribute to some of the thinkers and key lines of thought that made this revolution so enduring. By placing it in a broader historical context he also offers a critical perspective. Using the work of M.W. Keatinge he reminds us that the founding fathers of the SHP movement were not the first to challenge ‘traditional' school history and nor were they the first to devise methods that were both rigorous and highly practical. Moreover, the evidence revolution must not stop with the thinking of the 1970s and 1980s that now dominates school textbooks. McAleavy argues that two decades of work with historical sources in schools reveals continuing problems. He alerts us to some distortions of the historical process and to questionable pedagogical practice that can occur when teachers overemphasise notions of ‘reliability' at the expense of other types of evidential understanding. He also argues that far from being antithetical to good evidential analysis, links with contextual knowledge are to be encouraged . Finally, he suggests that the processes of synthesis, reasoning and argument need to be taught more directly if pupils are to make full use of their critical understanding of historical sources.