‘Public guardians, bold yet wary’?

While history teachers (and examiners) regularly invite students to consider what cartoons or paintings reveal about contemporary attitudes to particular social or political developments, such sources are often difficult to interpret and to use appropriately. Drawing on a wealth of detailed research and a passion to support teachers and students with essential contextual knowledge, Jane Card focuses specifically on the use of visual sources for exploring changes in attitudes to the police, demonstrating the co-existence of continuity and discontinuity – particularly disruption in what might otherwise appear to be gradual evolutionary change. Her article offers a powerful illustration
(with implications for other topics) of the way in which the combined use of different types of visual source can illuminate the distinctions between instant contemporary reactions to events and longer-term, more gradual changes in attitude...