What is Public History? Public History is about understanding how the past has affected, and is used by, the present. It brings history to life and helps us understand the relationship between the past and the public at present. Public History can involve history in the community, and a Public...

In the last two decades or so there has been a movement towards digitising large collections of original sources. These projects have had a range of purposes, approaches and target audiences but there can be little doubt that they have had a profound impact on the practice of history in...

The survey of Return of Conventicles completed during the summer of 1669 on the instructions of Archbishop Sheldon is the most important source available for studying the earliest periods of religious dissent after the Restoration, because with the exception of the Quakers, only a handful of records belonging to dissenters...

The riches of surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscripts showcased in a fabulous new exhibition at the British Library emphasises the essential interconnections between England and the Continent.

The Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) is the most extensive guide available to published writing on British and Irish history.  It covers the history of British and Irish relations with the rest of the world, including the British empire and the Commonwealth, as well as British and Irish...

The East of England Regional Archive Council was formed in 1999 and represents  users of archives as well as custodians of archives working within the East of England.  The East of England Region consists of the six geographical counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.  Members of the...

The Historical Manuscripts Commission (or, to give it its full and formal title, the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts) was established in 1869. Its purpose was to enquire into the existence and whereabouts of manuscripts of value for the study of British history, and to make the results of its...

The following podcasts are from an interview between Dr Andrew Foster, chair of our Public History Committee with Professor Miles Taylor, Director of the Institute of Historical Research. The podcasts look at the work of the IHR - what it aims to do for the historical profession and wider public, the...

John Coffey shows us what insights can be gained from the diaries of leading abolitionist, William Wilberforce. The diary is a distinctively modern genre... In English, the first diaries date from the Tudor era, but it is in the seventeenth century that the trickle becomes a flood. Alongside the famous...

Untold Live - British Library History Blog The British Library's collections contain stories of people's lives worldwide, from the dawn of history to the present day. They are told through the written word, images, audio-visual and digital materials. The Untold Lives blog shares those stories, providing fascinating and unusual insights...

Prior to the East European revolutions of 1989, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, commentators outside the region were largely reliant on printed material collected by specialist research libraries, informal rrangements with contacts ‘behind the iron curtain’, information that could be gleaned from visits to the region, and...

Most people would accept that our Society is changing at a rate, and in ways, with which our predecessors have never had to deal. The old stabilities and certainties seem to have disappeared from our modern day lives. Perhaps this is why so many people seem to be interested in...

Many fascinating individuals appear in the British Library’s Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition – Bede, Alfred, Canute, Emma, William the Conqueror – but one deserves to be much better known, especially in this her anniversary year: one of the most important women in British history, hers is a classic case of the...