In novels featuring history teachers and lecturers, the main characters are usually male, unmarried and with poor mental health. This article provides a rough classification of the different types of pathology displayed, and suggests why this characterisation might be the case. 

Of all the texts, Graham Swift’s Waterland (1983) is perhaps the most serious examination of the purpose of history, perhaps connecting it to E. H. Carr’s What Is History? (1961). The main character is Tom Crick, who has been made redundant, because his wife’s abduction of a baby has brought the school into disrepute. Besides, as his headmaster tells him, ‘We’re cutting back on history … There’ll be no new Head of History. History will merge with General Studies’. In fact, the headmaster has been trying to get rid of Crick for some time, as he has been weaving his personal history, his life story, into his history lessons...