For many academics, history is the paradigm moral science, the humanity par excellence, the great study of man, and all that he has done. Many academics are historians, and their studies are models of modern scholarship, in which the academic virtues of precision and impartiality have been developed and honed. But historians, like politicians, have tended not to formulate the principles of their thinking. They have perfected their know-how, and suspect that any attempt to articulate their methodology would distort it. Dolus latet in generalibus. Better to get on with the job, resolving diculties as and when they arise. There is much force in this contention. Inadequate philosophies of history have resulted in much bad history. But even good historians sometimes think about what they are doing, and are in danger of being misled by the bad philosophies of history their colleagues profess. If bad philosophies of history are in the air, better philosophies of history are needed as prophylactics against them. We can never produce a single, correct philosophy of history, since there are many dierent sorts of history, but we can guard against some common mistakes. History is almost always written history, written in prose, by an author who wants to be read. . These features impose important constraints: written language is markedly dierent from spoken language; it has one author, who hopes to be read by many readers. We need to consider who the intended readers are, and why they might take time to read what the author has written. Many thinkers overlook these points, and consider only the author, and what he says about the things he writes about. They fear he might be biased, and seek to tie him down to reporting just the facts. History should be a record of what actually happened, no more and no less. But that is an impossible aim. For one thing, the word `fact' is systematically ambiguous, meaning dierent things in dierent contexts. It is helpful, whenever encountering the word `fact', to ask what it is being contrasted with: fact as opposed to ction, or as opposed to interpretation, or as opposed to theory, or as opposed to law...