Has history become more important to you as you get older?

I love learning about the past, but hated it in school. Perhaps it was the way it was taught; all memorizing battle dates and Prime Ministers.

Movies, documentaries, books and now podcasts make history come alive and help us to understand the world around us. I think that is why I have always loved reading novels and try to find books set in different eras and countries.

I love history, and would really like to have a trip in a time machine and visit places I know through the ages.

I have a lot of books of photos, but would like to see what life was like before cameras, and to smell, hear, and touch things to get a real feel for what life was like.

It would be really interesting to see inside ordinary houses, too. There are very few photos of the insides - probably because of problems with lighting, and I’d love to see the decor and furniture.

I have always loved history but think I appreciate it more now I’m older. I’m more forgiving of people’s choices than my younger self.

Do Australian schools teach much pre-colonisation history nanna8 ? That would be the most interesting part for me.

I’ve always been interested in history, even those interminable lessons about vikings and Anglo Saxons at primary school.

I had a good history teacher in high school. We were introduced to what I suppose would be called the history of the British Empire. Drawing maps that showed the slave trade, Africa, America, the Caribbean and Britain improved my geography as well as my understanding of my counties history.

We should teach our history properly. Knowledge should lead to understanding. My history class when I was 14 in Lancaster had a white teacher and a class full of white pupils. It politicised me, the idea that enslaving people in this way for profit was a shock to me.

My love of history began when I was given a children’s encyclopaedia at the age of 10. Egyptian history was especially fascinating but it was another 40 years before I got to visit the sites.
Very recently I started on family history, perfect for lockdown, and I am finding it completely engrossing. Once lockdown is over I am going to visit the places my ancestors lived. It gives me something to look forward to.

I have always loved history. I still read a lot of history books and regret not studying it at university. My children were never very interested and much preferred geography but two of my GC are interested although one thought that Henry Vlll might have met Florence Nightingale. History is very important - it tells us how we got to where we are now. Also the study of history might help us avoid the same mistakes.

I spent 20 years re-enacting Living History. Had to give up now as I can't face sleeping in a tent any more. But you have to know your history to answer the (often thoughtless) questions put to you by the general public :-)

History was one of my main subjects at school , now I am a member of our Local History Society.
Clearing out a relatives house recently made me realise how little the story of ordinary people is preserved
Watching a Quiz show I recognised Queen Mary , DD was adamant that I couldn’t have remembered her in real life , but I do , I must have been 10 or 11 when she died and I remember the newspapers at the time , so maybe I am part of history ?

I have always enjoyed history. It was one of my favourite subjects at school. Bringing up 5 children didn't leave me much time for learning more about history but as I have got older I have more time for myself and I have rekindled my interest in it. Pre-Covid I was attending an adult education class and we have an excellent teacher who used to lecture on history. There are some very good TV programmes covering all aspects on history which I enjoy and I have spent years researching my family. I take part in a Zoom Quiz every week and when a history question comes up all eyes seem to rest on me!

I loved history at school, started reading historical fiction as well as history books as a teen and am now studying history at the Open University. My interest hasn't changed but the way historians see things has changed and there is much more stress on social history and ordinary people rather than just Kings and Queens and military history.

I used to enjoy the 'In search of' programmes on TV with Michael Wood. He got me interested in the dark ages, which really weren't dark at all, just they left a minimal amount of evidence.

Strangely, this is something I have been thinking about a lot recently. Though I took history up to A level, I am aware that there are some periods that I know very little about. I loved as the small child, the lesson where the teacher read stories from a book called Heroes of History which was where my interest began. Oddly enough Humbertbear the first lesson I had at High School began by the teacher saying that we learn history so that we don’t make the same mistakes that our ancestors made!

I have planned to do some research and compile salient points from the reign of each British monarch and then decide which eras interest me most and then dig really deeply. That should keep me quiet for a while, I only wish I had thought of doing it earlier in the lockdown. A couple of years ago I did some research regarding the way homes had changed through the ages, it was really fascinating.

Oh BTW I remember Queen Mary too, she died in the March of our Queens’s coronation year, having made it clear that if she died she did not want it to affect the ceremony. I recall the magnificent hats, I think they were called toques, generally with a small plume of feathers and a diamond brooch (I assume it was a brooch).

My history at school was dull and rather bitty. The Angles Saxons and Jutes, the Romans, Pitt the Younger, The Kings and Queens, the Industrial and Agrarian Revolutions, Suez and Trade.

I remember, like Iam64, the endless maps with arrows. There was always someone sweeping armies around the world! And then there was the British Empire.
Much of this was greedy and ridiculous to me - and I do not remember any of it with anything like pleasure. It was deeply dull. I could never understand the need for invasion anywhere so a lot of it seemed pointless.

We spent some time on the 1st and second world wars (not as much as they do now, that's for sure) - we were told to read "The Diary of Anne Frank" as homework. This was quite enlightened I think now.

I wonder if I might have found the whole thing more interesting if we has been reading more novels set in different times. Getting in people's heads was not a priority - the priority was dates and places, people's names and so on.

I don't honestly know what would have interested me as a child history-wise if not more "story". I think some of us need more understanding of people and a feel for time to make more sense of things.

I now find a lot of if interesting. I am moved at ruins or archeological sites - at places where people lived and worked, where they died for their beliefs or fought a cause.
The idea that other people with similar loves and fears and reason trod this earth before us, is deeply deeply moving. That ancient peoples made the most extraordinary discoveries is exciting and eye-opening. The thought that what is important to me today will be gone in the proverbial blink of an eye has meaning now.

I also think I need to feel man's inhumanity to man in order to engage fully with the power struggles, oppression and injustices. This came with age and my own "lived experience" as we now say (though I loathe this phrase). I think I'm very driven both by my heart and understanding of the way power works as far as history is concerned.

I've just read back over what I've posted and want to contradict myself
?...
I clearly did connect with some things as a young person as I remember thinking about the potato famine and trying to imagine what it was like to be starving with children to feed and wondering what it was like to have to move to work in say, the cotton mills from the countryside. I remember feeling lucky as a teenager that I didn't live in earlier times.

No.
I pick things up from books I read which is an interesting byline.

"fraid I found history utterly boring, then our teacher lacked any personality - a bachelor who lived with his mum. Now, of course, I and the rest of us are part of history, or my GC probably think so. I learned more about history when I was researching the family history, that was interesting, and geography. Our geography teacher spent his time waving a stick at us, it was quite hypnotic.

Later in life I found out that my great uncle had emigrated to Australia as a young man and died in the First World War as a member of the AIF. He was only 21 and I started to read a lot about the War . My dad was in the RAF flying planes and I became interested in the rise of Hitler and the Nazis and how ordinary people were swept along by his speeches etc. I like reading historical novels, too. Hilary Mantel and also Philippa Gregory both pretty accurate in their background information.

In primary school I read bits of a big book called People in History by R J Unsted - I was hooked. A little later I had a little notebook with dates and info (birth, who they married, where buried etc) on English & UK Kings & Queens from 1066, printed on the back. I loved that little notebook.
I started my family tree when on maternity leave.
So I've always loved history, though never studied it beyond 16.

I thought history at school was boring, though I loved historical novels. Anya Seton, Norah Lofts, Margaret Irwin, Georgette Heyer (who wrote a cracking account of the battle of Waterloo, said to be recommended reading for Sandhurst students) etc. They brought the people of those eras to life. But, OMG! Victorian Prime ministers and Factory acts

I think that as you get older and realise that you are actually living in what will very shortly become 'history' that you begin to feel more appreciation of it and how the past has formed the present.

I love it, and have hundreds of books to prove it

I had no interest in history at school, but in my 40's I felt I wanted to know more so I enrolled at night school and took O level history. I enjoyed it so much that I did 3 more O levels and then 2 A levels. I'm fascinatd by the past now. At the moment I'm studying the Vikings, especially since I had my dna done and found I'm 20% Scandinavian.

Nope, find myself much more interested in the present and future than the past. However I do wish we could individually and collectively learn from past mistakes. It seems we have to experience everything for ourselves. Foolish but understandable I guess. I'm thoroughly grateful to Google in that, when I have a historical query, I can access the information immediately. Wonderful facility and far outweighs the laborious encyclopaedia research I used to have to do

Chardy I also had the Unsted book which actually I did find interesting (in parts) when young.

I got it out when my oldest daughter maybe 7 and I couldn't believe how dated it was! That was years ago too.
So sad.
It was decidedly written from a very white British male angle. We were definitely spreading our excellence round the world!

I think you learn more history after you leave school because as you travel and read, somehow it comes to have more context. I was always interested in how the napoleonic wars shaped our history, but it wasn’t until we were living in Belgium and I realised that Waterloo was on our doorstep that I actually went to the battlefield, a nightmare sea of blood and mud on that day in 1815, then read more about it, that it came alive for me. It wasn’t just about soldiers, courage and duty - it was about wives, sweethearts and ruined lives, the same as all wars are in the end, and rank and social standing didn’t decide who lived and who died. We came perilously close to being annihilated on that day. “Waterloo. Day of Battle” by David Howarth is a fascinating insight into the battle, the men who fought it, and the families they left behind.

Greyduster, I share the link you make between history and travel. I always wanted to go to India, not least because of the excellent teacher who introduced me to the East India Company and the involvement/invasion of India by the British Empire. I was lucky to spend 3 weeks in India as my big birthday treat. I loved the country and discussing its history, Including my country’s colonial history there.
I feel strongly we should teach our history properly. I live in a former mill town. Like most of them, we have a large population of people with Pakistani heritage. It’s shocking that some don’t realise why this is so