Recent developments in the history of modern Britain have led to the emergence of a history of intimacy, whether or not it is recognized as such. This historiographical review argues that intimacy is a useful category of historical analysis. Thinking in terms of inter-relationships between different forms of intimacy allows us to think with greater conceptual clarity about these forms, as well as types of intimacy that are difficult to categorize. The first section reviews recent and significant contributions to the literature and seeks to draw out existing connections and crosscurrents between subfields. The second section turns to recent work on the histories of selfhood and the emotions and considers what thinking about intimacy might add to these fields; it then builds on this recent work to propose that one way to ‘do’ the history of intimacy is to think in terms of ‘intimate practices’.

现代英国历史的最新发展导致了亲密历史的出现，无论这种亲密历史是否得到承认。这篇史学评论认为，亲密关系是历史分析的有用类别。根据不同形式的亲密关系之间的相互关系来思考，使我们能够对这些形式以及难以归类的亲密类型进行更清晰的概念思考。第一部分回顾了最近对文献所做的重要贡献，力图画出子场之间现有的联系和错流。第二部分转向关于自我和情感历史的最新研究，并考虑对亲密关系的思考可能会增加这些领域。