...history is inherently an eclectic discipline and the skills it requires are correspondingly diverse. And therein lie its strengths. Eclecticism is sometimes treated as a dirty word. At the very least it sounds untidy - just so: if historians treat the past in too tidy a manner they lose a great deal...It is precisely the ability to embrace complexities while making sense of them, and to think flexibly about diverse phenomena at distinct analytical levels, that characterises historians' purchase on the past.