Our Ethos
We are a values-driven company, dedicated to presenting new kinds of history tours.
What we’re about.
The past is not dead and gone.
Some people love history, but for a lot of folks, the very word “history” can put you to sleep. That’s understandable—history classes in schools the world over can be full of boring memorization, flag-waving nationalism, or feel just plain irrelevant.
We are dedicated to presenting new kinds of histories, ones that are up-to-date, meaningful, and challenging.
Up-to-date.
In our experience, travel guide books and even some tour guides present histories that are woefully out-of-date. Sometimes it’s that new discoveries have been made recently, but unfortunately, sometimes it’s that their histories reflect popular myths more than actual facts, or use terminology that is outmoded or even offensive.
That’s actually understandable—academic historians have a lot of difficulty getting their ideas out into the world! And popular myths can say a lot about a place and a people—but it’s important to talk about them as stories rather than truths.
One of our key specialties is in finding the latest and greatest research, and translating it to a wider public in our storytelling. And another is separating myth from fact, and helping others to do so too.
Meaningful.
History has a bad habit of being boring, but it doesn’t have to be.
Some of this has to do with the kind of history that is taught most often, focusing on endless parades of kings and military campaigns. While those can be fun for some people, focusing only on them leaves others out in the cold.
History has a lot more to offer—stories of people like you and me making their way through the world, the culture they lived through, the ideas they cultivated, the songs they wrote and the ways they lived.
History can and should be playful, emotional, inspiring and grand. It should be at times infuriating to the point that our blood boils. It should demand of us that we do and be better than those people in the past who were “just a product of their times.”
The best histories are meaningful in the present; they require us to think about our place in the world, where we come from and where we are going, and to shake us out of the complacent stupor of everyday life. Those are the kinds of stories we aim to tell.
Challenging.
History class can be hard, but that’s not the kind of challenging we mean.
On our tours, we grapple with the toughest of questions history offers us, and we do not shy away from criticizing the actions of people memorialized in statues and stately homes.
Too often histories have served the rich and powerful, celebrating only their achievements and overlooking their abuses.
We reject the idea that the past was made by a few “great men”. We reject histories that are enchanted by the “glories” of colonial empires, the “charm” of retrograde social structures, or the “power” of repressive regimes. Instead we seek to center the people exploited and marginalized by them and tell their stories as best we are able.
Though we strive for our histories to be non-partisan, we know in our bones that history is “small-p” political, because it is all about who we are, where we come from, how we live together and what our societies mean. To put a finer point on it, we strive to be anti-racist, LGBTQ+ affirming, feminist, and accessible to people with disabilities.
And through even the most difficult topics history can present to us, we strive to lead our tours with good humor, and find moments of levity even when discussing difficult subjects. We understand the importance of showing both the good and the bad—stories of resistance and survival in addition to stories of tragedy.
Join us. Let’s explore a different kind of history.