English and History BA, 3-4 years
Course information
Typical offer AAB-ABB
UCAS code VQ13
Institute code L34
Taught by English

97% of students in work or further study six months after graduating (The Uni Guide 2021)

Top 40 in the UK for English (Complete University Guide 2021)
Admissions enquiries
+44 (0)116 252 5281
ahladmissions@le.ac.uk
Course enquiries
+44 (0)116 252 2620
ArtsAdmissions@le.ac.uk
History and English share a deep and powerful kinship. After all, we can only understand texts by studying the past – a past we can only access by reading and analysing texts. On this degree, you will explore how writers have been – and continue to be – shaped by the world and culture they inhabit, and what their work can in turn tell us about the past.
Course description
Course description
The disciplines of English and History are inseparable. Major historical events affect authors, works, literary and cultural movements, even language itself, in important and complex ways, from the Norman Conquest to the Reformation, and from the Civil War to the Cold War and beyond. The English and History BA brings together these two naturally complementary subjects by grouping modules in such a way that they support and enrich one another.
You will explore English Literature and History from every period, and encounter a broad range of approaches and methodologies. A variety of option modules will allow you to deepen your understanding of those subjects that you find most fascinating. Our graduates leave Leicester with an unrivalled breadth of knowledge and skills.
This course will help you to understand how writers have been influenced by their wider contexts, how they have represented the world around them, and how to read and interpret texts in light of their history.
You will have access to library collections that date back to the 12th Century, with our 'special collection' archives of old books and manuscripts offering a direct connection with the past.
In your first and second year you will divide your time equally between English and History modules. You third year offers you the chance to specialise more in the area that interests you the most. You will have the opportunity to study a vast range of English and History modules from the Middle Ages to the present day.
Entry requirements
Entry requirements
- A/AS-levels: AAB-ABB at A-level including English (Language, Literature or combined). We prefer A-level History, though this is not essential. Two AS-levels may be considered in place of one A-level. General Studies is accepted
- EPQ with A-levels:ABB-BBB at A-level including English (Language, Literature or combined) + EPQ at grade B
- International Baccalaureate: Pass Diploma with 30 points, including 6 in Higher Level English
- Access to HE Diploma: Pass Access to HE Diploma with a minimum of 45 credits at level 3, 30 of which must be at Distinction. To include 12 credits at Distinction in English Level 3 Modules
- BTEC Nationals: Pass Diploma with D*DD. Plus grade B in A-level English (Language, Literature or combined)
Other national and international qualifications considered.
Second Year Entry may be possible with suitable qualifications.
Selection Process
When considering your application, we will look for evidence that you will be able to fulfil the objectives of the course and achieve the standards required. We will take into account a range of factors including previous exam results.
Applicants are not normally interviewed: If you receive an offer you will be invited to visit the department.
English Language Requirements
IELTS 6.5 or equivalent. If your first language is not English, you may need to provide evidence of your English language ability. If you do not yet meet our requirements, our English Language Teaching Unit (ELTU) offers a range of courses to help you to improve your English to the necessary standard.
International Qualifications
Find your country in this list to check equivalent qualifications, scholarships and additional requirements.
Countries listFees and funding
Fees and funding
UK and EU Students
Starting in 2022
Tuition fees for 2022/23 are yet to be confirmed. As an indication of what you might pay, the fees for students who started in 2021/22 were:
- £9,250 in your first year. Tuition fees are subject to government regulations and may change in future years
- Year Abroad: your fee will be £1,250 for that year
If you are resident outside the UK and the Republic of Ireland, you will need to pay a deposit of £2,000 to secure your place. This will be subtracted from your total tuition fee.
Find out more about scholarships and funding.
International Students
Starting in 2022
Tuition fees for 2022/23 are yet to be confirmed. As an indication of what you might pay, the fees for students who started in 2021/22 were:
- £17,450 per year
- Year Abroad: £4,362.50, which is 25% of the full-time tuition fee
You will need to pay a deposit of £2,000 to secure your place. This will be subtracted from your total tuition fee.
Find out more about scholarships and funding.
Careers and employability
Careers and employability
All students take part in the Talent Academy, which will introduce you to the resources provided by our Careers Development Service and provides opportunities to gain work experience with leading employers.
'History in the Classroom' is a Second Year module in which you can spend one afternoon a week under the direct supervision of a qualified classroom teacher in a local school where you will teach some History. If you are thinking of teaching as a profession, this is the module for you.
Graduate destinations
Our graduates have found work with companies such as:
- Allegis Group
- Aceville Publications
- The Mills Archive Trust
- PPL PRS Music Licensing
- Dennis Publishing
- Miyazaki City Board of Education
Rachel studied English with a year abroad and went on to become Head of English and Associate Assistant Principal at a secondary school in London.
Career Development Service
Get career-ready at Leicester with guidance from our award-winning Career Development Service. We're here to give you a lifetime offer of support, even after graduation. Our team of specialist careers advisers and mentors will help you every step of the way. From supporting you with CVs and interviews, to volunteering opportunities and placements, we're here to help you reach your professional goals.
Related courses
Related courses
Sustainable Development Goals
Sustainable Development Goals
We are committed to providing skills and knowledge to help prepare you tackle global challenges. We have mapped our undergraduate degrees for learning which aligns to the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.
This degree includes learning which relates to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals:
- Goal 5: Gender equality
- Goal 10: Reduced inequalities
- Goal 11: Sustainable cities and communities
Course structure
Year 1
Year 1
In Year 1, your modules will equip you with the fundamental skills for investigating English and History.
Core modules
- The Novel Around the World (double module)
- The Shock of the Modern
- Barbarism and Civilisation: Medieval and Early Modern Europe
- Renaissance Drama: Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (double module)
Option modules
Choose two option modules from:
- Global History: Connections and Cultures in a Changing World, 1750 to the present
- Great Britain: The State We're In
- US History since 1877
- Europe 1861-1991: Emancipation and Subjugation
Modules shown represent choices available to current students. The range of modules available and the content of any individual module may change in future years.
Year 2
Year 2
Year 2 allows you to explore an even greater range of literary and cultural movements alongside the historical currents and events that shaped them.
Core module
Option modules
Choose one option module from:
- Religious History
- All Bourgeois Now? Class in History
- Global Cities
- Madness, Monarchy and Politics in Georgian Britain
- Race and Ethnicity
- Enter the Dragon: Modern Chinese History, 1839-1989
- Americas Plural: Latin America and the United States
- Blood, Position and Power: The Nobility of Later Medieval England, 1066-1485
- Jack-the-Ripper: Crime, Popular Culture and Policing in Victorian Times
Plus either Chaucer and Medieval Culture (double module)
Or Renaissance Literature B (double module)
Plus one of the following three options:
- Love Wars: Gender, Writing and Society, 1660-1789 B (double module)
- Or Concepts in Criticism B (double module)
- Or two of these three modules:
If you are planning to write a History Dissertation in Year 3, you will also study Becoming the Historical Researcher.
If you are planning to write an English Dissertation in Year 3, you will choose two further option modules:
Choose one option module from:
And then choose one final option module from:
- The Latin World: Ancient, Medieval and Modern
- Domestic Revolutions: Women, Men, and the Family in American History
- A World Connected: Welfare, Economy and Government since 1945
- From Beer to Fraternity: Alcohol, Society, and Culture in North America
- History in the Classroom
- Heritage Field Project
Modules shown represent choices available to current students. The range of modules available and the content of any individual module may change in future years.
Year Abroad (optional)
Year Abroad (optional)
If you wish, you can spend your third year studying abroad at one of our partner institutions (eligibility is dependent on your academic performance in Years 1 and 2). Alternatively, you can opt to continue studying at the University and complete your degree in three years.
Studying abroad is not just for people who are interested in travelling and meeting new people. It is about acquiring life skills that are becoming increasingly significant for a wide range of jobs in our modern globalised society. Whether you go on to work in the private sector, the state sector, a non-governmental organisation or become self-employed you will find the experience invaluable. Find out more from our Study Abroad Unit.
Please note that a year spent abroad still incurs a tuition fee, but this is much lower than for a normal year at Leicester. See our Fees and Funding section for details.
English and History at Leicester have links with several European universities, administered through the Erasmus+ scheme. If you are eligible for a loan from Student Finance you can apply for a travel grant from them. Languages courses, at both beginners and advanced level, are available through the University’s Languages at Leicester scheme.
- For the latest information on the future of the Erasmus+ scheme at UK universities please see our Brexit microsite.
We have links with the following universities:
- University of Helsinki, Finland
- Paris Diderot University - Paris 7, France
- Universität Salzburg, Austria
- Universität Heidelberg, Germany
- Universität Leipzig, Germany
- Università di Bologna, Italy
- Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy
- Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands
- Universiteit Utrecht, Netherlands
- Université de Genève, Switzerland
History at Leicester also has links with Queen's University, Ontario, Canada. If you are receiving financial assistance from Student Finance your support will continue and you may also be eligible to apply for additional travel grants or scholarships.
Modules shown represent choices available to current students. The range of modules available and the content of any individual module may change in future years.
Final Year (English dissertation)
Final Year (English dissertation)
Core module
Option modules
Choose one option module from:
- Crime and Punishment in African American History
- The USA and the Vietnam War
- Fourteenth Century Crisis in England? Politics and Society 1297-1413
- Disasporas and Migrations in the Modern World
- Gender, Crime and Deviance in Eighteenth Century Britain
- On Europe’s Edge: Empires and Nations in Central and Eastern Europe, 1848-1918
- From Empire to Nation: Modern South Asia, c. 1857-1947
Then choose two option modules from:
- The Imperial Economy: Britain and the Wider World, 1815-1914
- What Difference Did the War Make? British Society and the Great War, 1900-1939
- Women in American Society from the Civil War to First World War
- Clothing and Fashion in Historical Perspective. Case Studies of Modern European History in Transnational Context
- When Two Dragons Fight: China and Japan at War in the Twentieth Century
- Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, c1350-1650
- The Medieval Natural World
- Abolitionists: Antislavery Activism in Britain and America, 1787-1865
Then choose one option module from:
- What Difference Did the War Make? British Society and the Great War, 1900-1939
- Clothing and Fashion in Historical Perspective. Case Studies of Modern European History in Transnational Context
- Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, c1350-1650
- The Imperial Economy: Britain and the Wider World, 1815-1914
- Slavery in the Americas
- Cities and the Making of Modern South Asia, c. 1750-1950
- Food, Diet and Health in Early Modern Europe
- When Two Dragons Fight: China and Japan at War in the Twentieth Century
- The Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1968
- Brave New World: City, Culture and Identity in Post-War England
Finally, choose:
- either Modern Literature and Postcolonial Britain
- or Rewriting Britain
Modules shown represent choices available to current students. The range of modules available and the content of any individual module may change in future years.
Final Year (History dissertation)
Final Year (History dissertation)
Core module
Option modules
Choose one option module from:
- Coming of Age in America: Representing Adolescence in Fiction and Film
- Forms of Modern Poetry
- The Child Writer
- Love and Death: The Novel in 19th Century Russia and France
- Feminist Fiction
- Church and State in Medieval Literature
- Writing Voices
- Criminal Women in Early Modern Literature
- Classical Worlds: Translation and Reception
- Detective Fiction from Sherlock Holmes to the Second World War
- Libertine Literature, 1660-1690
- Writing Prose Fiction
- On the Road Again: The Canterbury Tales After Chaucer
- The Living and the Dead in Nineteenth Century Literature and Culture
Plus either Romanticism: Revolutionary Writing from Blake to Shelley or Victorians: from Oliver Twist to The Picture of Dorian Gray A
Plus either Rewriting Britain (double module) or Postcolonial Britain
Finally choose two option modules (if you chose module A) or one option module (if you chose double module B) from:
- Modern Monsters: Contemporary American Texts
- War, Trauma and the Novel
- American Autobiography and American Literature
- Fantasy Literature and the Middle Ages
- Woman and the Feminine in Medieval and Renaissance Literature
- Late Victorian Gothic: Texts and Contexts
- Representing the Holocaust
- The Thatcher Factor: The 1980s in Literature
- Medicine and Literature in the 19th Century
- Modern European Fiction
- Historical Fiction
- Understanding Screenplays
- Kingdoms of Ice and Snow: Exploration in Writing and Film
- Tragedy
- Clinical Encounters? Narratives of Doctors and Patients from the Victorians to the Present Day
- Green Unpleasant Land: Britain’s Colonial Countryside
- Writing for Laughs
- Language, Power and Persuasion
- Sex and Sensibility: Women, Writing, Revolution
- The Imperial Economy: Britain and the Wider World, 1815-1914
- What Difference Did the War Make? British Society and the Great War, 1900-1939
- Women in American Society from the Civil War to First World War
- Clothing and Fashion in Historical Perspective. Case Studies of Modern European History in Transnational Context
- Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, c1350-1650
- When Two Dragons Fight: China and Japan at War in the Twentieth Century
- The Medieval Natural World
- Abolitionists: Antislavery Activism in Britain and America, 1787-1865
Modules shown represent choices available to current students. The range of modules available and the content of any individual module may change in future years.
Why Leicester?
Job prospects are excellent: 97% of our English students are employed (or studying for a Masters degree) six months after graduating. (DLHE)
Notable authors who have spoken at the University include Carol Anne Duffy, Will Self, Amitav Ghosh, Jacqueline Wilson, Roger McGough, Fay Weldon, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Sarah Waters.
Our teaching staff are active researchers in a large number of different fields, from Caribbean literature to writing on medicine, and from the pre-Conquest period to the post-colonial era.
We have well-respected research centres covering Medieval History, Urban History, English Local History and Genocide and Holocaust Studies.
Teaching and learning
Teaching
For each module you will typically have one or two lectures and a seminar each week, along with a number of additional events such as workshops on research and study skills, learning groups, and introduced film screenings. Lectures are designed to introduce you to important debates and contexts for understanding an author’s work. Weekly seminars, in which a tutor leads a small group of students in discussion, will allow you to explore a text or topic in depth.
When you study the ‘Renaissance Drama’ module in your first year, you will take part in a workshop with local theatre companies, including the opportunity to stage the climactic scenes of Shakespeare’s 'Richard III' actually on Bosworth Battlefield itself.
For your third-year dissertation you receive one-to-one tuition across the term from a tutor with an interest in your chosen subject.
Assessment
You will be assessed through a combination of essays, group work, oral presentations, and exams. These assessments are designed to help you build confidence in a range of skills and to provide prospective employers with evidence that you can work effectively both as an independent researcher and as a team member.
You will have regular meetings with your Personal Tutor to discuss progress in your studies. Your Personal Tutor will also provide a sympathetic ear for all matters of personal concern, whether they be academic, financial, housing, career or social issues.
Independent learning
When not attending lectures, seminars or other timetabled sessions you will be expected to continue learning independently through self-study. Typically, this will involve reading journal articles and books, working on individual and group projects, undertaking research in the library, preparing coursework assignments and presentations, and preparing for exams. To help with your independent learning, you can access the Library and our social study spaces in halls of residence.
Your contact hours will depend on the option modules you select. You can see details of the contact hours on individual module pages.
Academic support
Our Student Learning Development Team provides help in the following areas:
- study and exam skills
- academic writing
- presentations
- dissertations
- numerical data skills
- referencing sources
Our AccessAbility Centre offers support and practical help for students with dyslexia or other specific learning difficulties, including physical, mental health or mobility difficulties, deafness, or visual impairment.
Teaching staff
You will be taught by an experienced teaching team whose expertise and knowledge are closely matched to the content of the modules on the course. PhD research students who have undertaken teacher training may also contribute to the teaching of seminars under the supervision of the module leader. Our teaching is informed by the research we do. You can learn more about our staff by visiting our staff profiles.