About
The History Company specialises in sourcing, writing and bringing together historical content in print, video, pictures and audio. The really interesting gems of your history are probably hidden in a library or archive – and won’t appear in a Google search top ten. We can bring them alive for you on the web.
We offer a bespoke service. We don’t do off the peg – your history is unique so we tailor everything we do to your needs. The History Company draws on a network of more than 20 expert journalists, historians, picture and film researchers as required.
Founder Chris Holme wrote and edited the first web-based history of the NHS in Scotland.
As communications manager in the Scottish Government’s web team until July 2011, he knows where all the bodies are buried at St Andrew’s House having led the project for its digital history.
Holme is an honours graduate of Manchester University where he studied 17th century Anglo-Venetian relations. Initial confusion over the Italian word ‘storia’ may have shaped his subsequent career straddling both journalism and history.
Carver, then a Walsall-based engineering company, gave him his first job to research its fascinating first 200 years. After spells in Yorkshire and Aberdeen, Holme joined the staff of the Glasgow Herald before heading to government where he was principal media advisor to various ministers. He led the health communications team in the run-up to legislation for groundbreaking Scottish smoking ban.
Awards:
Inaugural Reuters Foundation Fellow in Medical Journalism, Green College, Oxford,1996. This led to Trial by TB published by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh – its first major publication by a lay person in 300 years.
Glaxo/ABSW Science Writer of the Year (UK newspapers) 1990 and Scottish Press Awards (David Boyle) prize, 1986
Other activities:
Archibald Goodall lecturer, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, 2001
Keynote speaker at TB in the 21st Century conference in Edinburgh jointly organised by Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland, World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (IUATLD).
Speaker British Medical Journal conference 50 Years of Randomised Trials and at BMA Junior Members’ Forum. WHO commission December 1997 to investigate TB control in South Africa.
Advisor and contributor to Reuters Foundation medical and scientific programmes and seminars for overseas journalists and for the launch of TB Alert, the UK’s first new TB charity in 50 years.
