Aural history

Harriet Swain may have been confused by my accent, as she misquoted me as saying that the publication of oral history testimony on the world wide web was the "antithesis" of oral historians' original aspiration to give voice to those who have been unrecorded in history ("Living document, THES January 1). What I said was that the publication is an extraordinary apotheosis of that aspiration.

Alistair Thomson Lecturer, University of Sussex.