HISHORY IS A HUMILIATING SUBJECT to try know and it is both understandable and very forgivable that historians should have limited their tasks to the areas which have yielded the easiest returns-the well-documented constitutional areas, the dramatic and well-recorded zones of military history, the fundamental importance of economic history, the rich arena of political history, the major stepping stones of political thought, or the acceptable boundaries of biographical history. These and many others have yielded handsome returns and have been quarried and requarried over a satisfyingly long period. But social history-the basic history of human experience-has been less well served. There are no satisfactory social histories of birth or childhood, of examinations or literacy, of crime and its punishment, of sex or marriage, of food or drink, of the home, of clothes, of leisure or sport, of wages and work, or of parenthood or health. Until very recently there was nothing adequate even on death.