Historian in 731: Bede dates the past from the Incarnation

What does a historian actually do all day? Mostly read, verify and write. A working historian locates primary sources — letters, ledgers, court records, photographs, interviews — establishes whether they are genuine and what they can honestly prove, then builds a written argument other scholars can check line by line. Teaching, archive trips, peer review and grant applications fill the rest; the popular image of constant discovery describes perhaps a few days a year.

Do you need a PhD to be a historian? For a university post, effectively yes: the doctorate has been the entry ticket since the German seminar model spread in the nineteenth century. Outside academia the rule softens. Museums, archives and public history often hire at master's level, and some celebrated historians — Barbara Tuchman, who won two Pulitzer Prizes, held no doctorate at all — built careers entirely on published work.

How long does it take to become a historian? Roughly nine to twelve years after secondary school for the academic route: a bachelor's degree, usually a master's, then a doctorate of four to seven years built on original archival research. Add the research languages — most doctoral programs expect reading competence in two or more — and the postdoctoral years most people spend before a permanent post, and the full pipeline rivals medicine in length.