"The kernel of history is the growth of civilisation. The conception of our civilisation as implying certain standards of order, liberty, justice, morality, culture, and material well-being takes shape in the mind of the young citizen and helps him to find meaning in the pageantry of events; and the conviction that it has been built up, like a coral reef, by the efforts of myriads of men and women may well inspire a determination to take his place among the architects and engineers of a better world."

This is an inspiring view of history to which I believe many of us would subscribe. It was written by G.P.Gooch in 1930 in an essay entitled 'History as a Training for Citizenship'. Unfortunately, it bears very little relation to the way in which history is taught in many of our schools today.

There are, of course, many areas of the curriculum which are causing concern. The government has been obliged to impose a Literacy Strategy on all schools to try to counter the disastrous effects of 'progressive' teaching methods, introduced in the wake of the Plowden Report, which abandoned phonics. The teaching of maths has also received a lot of attention, as failure to teach multiplication tables, coupled with the use of calculators, even in exams, has left a generation of school children virtually innumerate.

History teaching is in an equally bad way, but it has not received the same sort of attention. This is unfortunate, as the teaching of history is a vital part of the process of transmitting from one generation to the next knowledge of the events and the institutions which have enabled us to live in a free and prosperous society. In short, the health of our culture depends on each generation knowing where we have come from and how.

History is now not even taught in a chronological way. Instead of showing how one event influences others, and how the great men and women of each century have helped to make us to the sort of people we are, children are presented with all sorts of 'modules' about topics such as the state of the peasants, the role of women, slavery and the Empire, as if these things can be comprehended without knowing the order in which events occurred. Jumping from one century and one civilisation to another, children end up scarcely knowing if the Battle of Britain or the Battle of Hastings came first.

The GCSE history syllabus makes it difficult for teachers, with the best will in the world, to use a narrative format. Earlier this year the Historical Association complained about flaws in the curriculum and examination system which, it claimed, encourage 'excessively narrow content' with a 'poor sense of chronological context'. In the same month, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority complained of a 'modular approach [which] may have fragmented the learning approach', and a 'less thoughtful, less intellectual approach to history, which fails to provide strong foundations for undergraduate study'. No wonder a Cambridge don told me that freshers are arriving at Cambridge to read history without knowing what the Renaissance and the Reformation were.

We at Civitas want to do something to improve this lamentable situation, and way to proceed is to identify really good material produced in the past but now out-of-print. In the course of our reading and discussions, one title kept coming up: Our Island Story by H.E. Marshall, a classic children's history book first published in 1905 and now long out-of-print. Guardian columnist David McKie professed his 'lifelong gratitude' to Henrietta Marshall who 'gave thousands of juvenile readers… their first taste and thirst for narrative history, which would carry them on in time to less simplified, less sentimental history', while Antonia Fraser wrote that: 'Most of my historical works… seem to have been pre-figured by H E Marshall … Now out of print and permeated, I am sure, with unfashionable sentiments, Our Island Story has nevertheless earned my lifelong gratitude.'

We acquired several copies of different editions of Our Island Story and started reading through it. It was easy to see why the book is remembered with such affection! It is beautifully written, and tells the history of Britain from the Romans to the death of Queen Victoria. Everything is arranged in chronological order, with every chapter bearing the name of the monarch of the period covered. Wars and revolutions, plagues and inventions, great men and women, all parade through these pages, giving the young reader a brilliant picture, simple but accurate, of the way in which our ancestors made us the people we are today.

But perhaps the most appealing thing about Our Island Story is the way in which Henrietta Marshall weaves legendary tales of the Round Table and King Alfred burning the cakes into her history, on the basis that 'they are part of Our Island Story, and ought not to be forgotten, any more than those stories about which there is no doubt'.

'I hope … that it will help you to like your school history books better than ever, and that, when you grow up, you will want to read for yourselves the beautiful big histories which have helped me to write this little book for little people.'

As an interesting little footnote, Our Island Story is said to have been the inspiration for the spoof-history classic 1066 and All That. It is a sobering thought that the humour of that book would mean nothing to many young people today, as they simply wouldn't know enough history to get the joke.

Will you help us towards this? Whatever you can afford to give will be gratefully received.

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Robert Whelan

Deputy Director