The theme of time has tended to only be of sporadic interest to historiographers and philosophers of history, but in recent years a number of major works on historical time have appeared. This issue gathers together major authors in the field – Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth, Penelope J Corfield, Barbara Adam – whilst also offering comparative perspectives on history and time, from the perspectives of other disciplines, such as sociology and archaeology, and other cultural traditions, such as Buddhism. As such it represents an important collection of distinct views as to how thinking about time can help us to rethink the discipline of history. The issue was based primarily on papers offered to the first international conference on time and history, convened by the Centre for History and Theory at Roehampton University in 2007.