Reinventing History: The Enlightenment Origins of Ancient History, edited by James Moore, Ian Macgregor Morris and Andrew J. Bayliss (Centre for Metropolitan History, Institute of Historical Research, University of London, 2008) hardback, xi, 312pp., £18.00, ISBN 978 1 905165 37 7

This book is a collection of essays by nine scholars from seven UK universities, edited by the deputy director of the Centre for Metropolitan History at the Institute of Historical Research, a research fellow in Classics at Nottingham and a lecturer in Greek History at Birmingham.

In ten chapters the volume examines through an analysis of historical narrative the debates about sources, methods and material culture and the political use of history which were so crucially considered in the eighteenth century and which resulted in the foundations of the modern discipline of ancient history.  The traditional accounts of historiographical development are challenged.

There is a full index and extensive bibliographies of primary and secondary material.  The jacket has a pleasant picture of the temple of Minerva at Suadium (now thought to be the temple of Poseidon) but the six matt illustrations in the text are rather disappointing.  A pity as it is a competent study of innovative value.