In Our Shadowed Present, J.C.D. Clark (2003) challenges the rejection of history and the historical perspective at the heart of much modernist and postmodernist thinking. I have long felt uneasy about the ahistorical, even anti-historical, character of our field. So when I was asked to edit a special edition of the Journal of Educational Administration and History on this theme I eagerly accepted. I believe that the historical perspective has a great deal to offer to the theory and practice of educational administration and leadership but is being squeezed from two quite different directions; modernism and postmodernism and their relativistic assumptions and scientism and its positivistic premises. From neither standpoint is there a place for anything that is recognisably history. In the face of the threat of this bizarre alliance, I invited contributors to the special edition to consider what role history has had (Eugene Samier) and might have on substantive themes such as context (Mike Bottery), culture (Richard Bates) and social justice (Jill Blackmore) and on methodological themes such as the production of intellectual histories (Helen Gunter) and life writing (Fenwick English). This text will be published shortly before the conference, and I will report its key findings. I will argue that greater attention needs to be given to a humanistic conception of the field in general and to history in particular and will illustrate the possibilities of such an approach drawing on the special edition and my own past research in secondary schools including: 3 regimes of headship over 25 years at ‘Rivendell’; and, 3 years in the life of an exceptional middle leader at ‘Revelstone’.