My PhD looked at postwar German camps for refugees and expellees, I absolutely loved my archive visits & interviewing eyewitnesses/former residents. My experience as a history student would have been far less rich without the broadening of horizons which languages bring.

I did smatterings of Medieval history - Medieval Europe, intellectuals, C12th unis - during my undergrad having zilch knowledge of Latin, but one of my best memories of my yr abroad was a course based in the archive, looking at orig C15th sources on German witch trials.

Also means British scholars of the future will be restricted to English language topics & sources, as they just won’t be able to access so much in the original and research will be much poorer as a result….

Absolutely hideous. MFL is now in an ever downward spiral - its course was set when MFL stopped being compulsory at GCSE in 2004, so now is an obvious choice for cuts when HEIs are in the shit. Completely tragic. My History w/ German course (at Bristol) was amazing and fewer will get this chance…