Britain & Ireland

The Tudors continue to fascinate and some of their story is told here along with the other dynasty of the period the Stuarts. Alongside those resources are the podcasts on the ideas that transformed British society during that period and created a United Kingdom for the first time. The industrial revolution is explored through poetry as well as technology. Religious collapse, change and diversity are all themes explored in this section. Read more

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  • Out and About in ‘The most Loyal and Ancient City of Taunton’

    Article

    The Somerset town of Taunton featured prominently in the highly significant political and religious conflicts of the seventeenth century. Isabella Peach examines Taunton’s role in these events and the impact they had on the town. Her article is based on her winning entry in the 2023 Young Historian Post-16 Local...

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  • Opinion: Who was ‘the man of his time’?

    Article

    In this new, occasional section of The Historian, contributors share their thoughts on matters of public historical debate. We invite our readers to respond, either by writing to the editors at thehistorian@history.org.uk or by writing their own opinion piece. Here, Lorenzo Kamel shares his thoughts on why saying ‘he was a...

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  • My Favourite History Place: A Short History of Brill

    Article

    In this article Josephine Glover discusses the long history of her ‘favourite history place’, the Buckinghamshire village of Brill. She explains how there has been a human settlement there since Mesolithic times. Using various fragments of evidence, she pieces together the extent to which the village was important to early...

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  • In conversation with Nicholas Radburn

    Article

    The Historian sat down with historian Nicholas Radburn to discuss his latest book, Traders in Men, which examines the role of merchants in the expansion and transformation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the eighteenth century.

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  • My Favourite History Place: The Holburne Museum

    Article

    Jane A. Mills describes in this article how the fascination of Holburne Museum in Bath comes partly from the historical objects on display but also from the varied history of the building itself. She explains how the recent development of the museum illustrates the ongoing issue of trying to resolve...

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  • Out and About: exploring Lancaster’s ‘glocal’ history online and on foot

    Article

    The city of Lancaster has many important historical landmarks from both the medieval period and the time of the Industrial Revolution. In this article Sunita Abraham and Christopher Donaldson describe the thinking behind a guided historical tour they have devised for the city. This involves engaging with modern technology, placing Lancaster within a...

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  • The Coronation of King Charles III

    Article

    2023 will see the first coronation of a British monarch for 70 years. Only those now in their 70s or above will remember the last one. The UK is the only country in Europe still to carry out a coronation, a ceremony that has its roots in traditions over a...

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  • Joan Vaux: a remarkable Tudor lady

    Article

    Joanna Hickson is a hugely successful novelist, specialising in historical fiction, and she describes herself as feeling that she actually lives in the fifteenth century. For readers of The Historian she explores and explains how she developed her understanding and knowledge of a highly significant Tudor woman who is a central figure in two of...

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  • Out and About in Hull’s Old Town

    Article

    Sylvia Usher explores a hidden gem in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Wenceslaus Hollar’s map of seventeenth century Hull can be a street guide for the Old Town even today. Modern Hull sprawls along the Humber estuary with residential areas fanning out for three miles or more. Hull as it was...

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  • Tudor queens: power, identity and gender

    Article

    Gregory Gifford investigates the cultural issues raised by the sixteenth century‘s reigning queens. In 1877 when Sitting Bull led his Lakota people across the border into Canada, he told them they were entering ‘The land of The Grandmother’ – a wonderful phrase to express Queen Victoria’s matriarchal authority. Three hundred years earlier...

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  • Elizabeth I: ‘less than a woman’?

    Article

    Tracy Borman examines the femininity of the Virgin Queen. Elizabeth I is often hailed as a feminist icon. Despite being the younger, forgotten daughter of Henry VIII with little hope of ever inheriting the throne, she became his longest-reigning and most successful heir by a country mile. In an age when...

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  • What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the impact of the English Reformation

    Article

    Since the first stirrings of religious reform in the sixteenth century, people have been writing the history of the Reformation, debating what happened and why it happened. John Foxe arguably became the first historian of the English Reformation when he published Actes and Monuments in 1563. Better known as ‘The...

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  • Film: The ladies-in-waiting who served the six wives of Henry VIII

    Article

    Every queen had ladies-in-waiting. Her confidantes and chaperones, they are the forgotten agents of the Tudor court. Experts at survival, negotiating the competing demands of their families and their queen, the ladies-in-waiting of Henry VIII’s wives were far more than decorative ‘extras’: they were serious political players who changed the...

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  • After the revolution: did Cromwell, Washington and Bonaparte betray revolutionary principles?

    Article

    This article examines the aftermath of three epoch-making periods of change – the English, American, and French Revolutions. A comparison of the trio of military commanders who gained power as a direct consequence of these upheavals reveals how the very political radicalism which brought them to power also threatened to...

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  • Croydon’s Tudor and Stuart inns

    Article

    Trevor James offers a case study in how to define and identify inns as part of the historic urban environment. Croydon’s Tudor and Stuart inns Croydon’s Tudor and Stuart inns had a remarkable and formative effect on its urban landscape, an effect which still endures into modern times. Topographers and...

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  • My Favourite History Place: Swarkestone Bridge

    Article

    Trevor James reveals his continued fascination with this major Midland scheduled monument. Almost 40 years ago, my role as a Nottingham University extra-mural tutor took me to Melbourne in Derbyshire. For the first few weeks I followed a cross-country route to Melbourne, via Burton-upon-Trent, Woodville and Hartshorne, but, on a dark November...

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  • A woman of masculine bravery: the life of Brilliana, Lady Harley

    Article

    Sara Read introduces us to a woman who challenged expectations during the turbulent years of the early seventeenth century. In 1622 a pious young woman with a highly unusual first name, Brilliana Conway, sat at her desk doodling her signature on her commonplace book. She had lofty ambitions for her self-development...

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  • My Favourite History Place: Castle Hill, Huddersfield

    Article

    Alison Hramiak tempts us to visit Castle Hill, south of Huddersfield, to look for traces of our long dead ancestors, to contemplate the passing of the centuries on that site and to enjoy the lovely views. It’s often the way that we ignore what’s geographically close to us when we visit...

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  • The British Empire on trial

    Article

    In the light of present-day concerns about the place, in a modern world, of statues commemorating figures whose roles in history are of debatable merit, Dr Gregory Gifford puts the British Empire on trial, presenting a balanced case both for and against. In June 2020 when the statue of slave-trader Edward Colston...

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  • ‘Zulu’ and the end of Empire

    Article

    In this article, Nicolas Kinloch examines the 1964 film Zulu. He suggests what it might tell us about the reality of the British Empire and asks if it has anything to say about the era in which the film was made. One of the most successful British films of 1964...

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