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In this interview with Leonidas Montes, the prominent English historian Quentin Skinner explains the source of his passion for history and discusses his vision of the study of the political ideas of the past. As he sees it, the central interpretive question is always about what the author of some particular text may have been doing in writing it. The historian’s skill and learning need to be deployed in such a way as to apprehend the spectrum of debate, to identify what specific arguments are going on, and thereby place the sepecific texts in which he or she is interested in their appropiate place. Thus the main duty of an interpreter is to try to recover the exact nature of the contribution that each text is trying to make. Among other topics, he also states his opinion on the concept of freedom in republican theory and liberal theory, on where they coincide and where they differ, and he expresses his doubts about labelling these rival positions as "republican" or "liberal."