I am a "in the highly unlikely event that I pass" person. That says everything really.

Have you actually read the paper/book which is supposed to have dealt with the topic you propose? You may find out that the perspective is different from the one you have chosen, or that there are significant gaps you could try to resolve. I would definitively try to read this paper/book and if needed modify my proposal to add new aspects.

I reckon that you might be misunderstanding slightly what a PhD actually involves. There's obviously the risk of doing less than expected but also the risk of doing more than expected (which seems to be your case). I would suggest you to think about your limitations: is your funding running out soon, can you support yourself for 4, 5, 6 or the number of years you need to do the thesis the way you would like, is there a particular date you would like to finish your PhD by, would it be harmful for your future career to have invested 6 years in your PhD instead of 3 (employers won't probably read your thesis and won't know that it took so long because you wanted it to be perfect)?
If you are fortunate enough not to have any financial/familiar limitations, just take your time and do the PhD your way.
If you do have limitations, concentrate in achieving a satisfactory standard for your thesis and bear in mind that you can always expand your research later through a postdoc.

@Christine - if I were you, I would really concentrate on writing a good master's thesis and preferably one which can be developed into a PhD thesis. That will help you to come with a really strong and well developed research proposal, which is definitively helpful in the funding competition. If you plan to apply to the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) bear in mind that the deadline is usually in February-March for start in the following September-October, and by the time you apply you must already have been accepted by a department to follow a PhD program (because the department needs to fill in some parts of your application form for AHRC). So better start sooner than later.

You may want to take a look at www.studenten-wg.de ... it's a website to look for rooms in shared flats. At least it will give you an idea of how much will you be paying for a room which should be cheaper than an appartment but among the most expensive rents in Germany anyway.

I don't think you will be able to register directly for a PhD. Most universities only allow this if you have started another research degree before. Even if you are allowed to start directly with the PhD program, most probably you will be registered first for a MPhil and in your second year get upgraded to PhD status if your progression is ok. You will probably never submit your MPhil thesis nor obtain the MPhil degree - registration in a MPhil is simply a formal requirement.
That said, in the humanities and social sciences you are usually expected to have a master's degree before you embark on a research program (be it MPhil or PhD). During this masters hopefully you should have become familiar with research techniques and so on.
It is not strictly compulsory to have a masters to start a PhD in the humanities/social sciences but the reality is that almost everybody has one.

@Alice - yes, that sounds interesting to me, but maybe due to the fact that I started out as a Classics-Literary criticism freak before switching to my current area.

I am researching the aesthetics of music during the first years of the Franco regime in Spain - which music was acceptable, which music could be potentially banned, how could music be used for propaganda purposes, and the theoretical justifications behind all this. I'm currently writing a chapter on the musical relations between Spain and Germany (and Italy as well but it was much more limited) during WWII - which is fascinating so I don't know why nobody has bothered to write about it before!

It depends basically on which area are you in, but from the point of view of the research councils I think you at least meet the minimum requirements. For the Arts it is usually a 2.1 BA + a masters (I think the Research Councils for the sciences do not require a masters though). Then it depends of a number of things like the originality and quality of your research proposal, your motivation, whether you have relevant work experience and many other things.

Hi jojo,

From what I remember from your previews posts, most of your problems seem to arise from the lack of adequate supervision. Is there anyway you can get supervision from somebody who really masters your topic? Any external supervisor who doesn't work for you university maybe but with whom you could have frequent contact, and who could work together your current supervisors so they get to know better which your needs are? Not that I know your situation but from what you've told in this forum I think this would be the only way to sort it.

Same here (lovely Surrey). Sunny weather last week, but hail on the weekend and mad wind yesterday. So my hopes of definitively get rid of my winter clothes for this season are now destroyed! And I think I've caught a cold and feel incredibly irritable... so I guess this week won't be a very productive one.

I was and still am very reluctant to use "I" but I think that is getting more and more frequent in academic writing - at least in the humanities, or at least in some areas.

Being based in London, are you sure that you should look specifically for online or distance PhDs? You could register at one of the various universities in London as a PT student and visit your department once a week, or once a month, to have your supervisory meetings, see what's around and borrow books.
Not that I know much about your area but I'm under the impression that it involves mainly reading journal articles, specialized books, collect data, and you can do most of these things from home (as opposed to doing a lab-based PhD).
There are some people in my department which I hardly see except when they attend their supervisory meetings, and yet they are not registered for an "online" or "distance" PhD, and some of them are even FT and funded students. They have decided that they can do most of their work from home, accessing JSTOR online, or they use other libraries other than the university library which are more convenient for them.

Well I think my university entitles us officially to 6 or 7 weeks a year. But in my department nobody asks for them officially. In any case I find it a bit ridiculous to give you holiday if you are a student who is not perceiving any money for his work (as opposed to people with scholarships etc.).

Given that you are based in London, have you tried Birkbeck College? They claim to specialize in part-time, evening courses for mature students or people who just can't attend university on a regular basis. I don't know whether they have such schemes for PhD courses though.

There's of course the Open University - but I think that if you register for a full-time PhD with them you still have to live within commutable distance of the lovely city they're based in (Milton Keynes) so it's not really by distance learning anymore. I don't think this applies to part-time though.

However many "traditional" universities do not require the continuous presence of PhD students on campus. This is specially true in the humanities, for example, or in non-lab based research (for obvious reasons). In most humanities, as long as you have access to a good library where you can find the resources you need for your research and attend supervisory meetings, there's really no need to be in your department every day.

However as this may vary I would suggest to contact each department and clarify how many days per month/year would you be required to be on campus (for supervisions, training or other requirements).