The Second World War is no longer a recent war. Very soon, there will be no veterans left to tell us how they saw things and what it was really like for them. While some eyewitnesses who were children at the time might be with us to see the centenary...

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...

This resource is a pamphlet titled ‘The Byzantine Empire on the Eve of the Crusades’ and written by R. J. H. Jenkins in 1953. As such, some of the scholarship has been updated since then, although it can provide useful historiography. It is not strange that there should in recent...

I. The Legacy of Versailles The Outbreak of a second world war on 1 September 1939 might have been expected to produce in due course a great controversy on ‘war guilt'. But there has been nothing comparable with the debate which took place during the 1920s on the 1914 issues. The...

The Duchy of Courland’s attempts to establish outposts in the Caribbean and Africa were not the only Baltic ventures across the Atlantic during the seventeenth century. However, the expeditions of the small vassal dukedom were possibly the most unlikely. The article introduces the motivations behind the Couronian colonial project, as...

Daniel Steinbach asks why the loss of the German colonies in Africa was perceived as a powerful symbol of Germany’s deliberate humiliation at the end of the First World War. Famously, Germany’s first and last shots of the First World War were fired in Africa. From its beginning to its...

Nine centuries after enthusiasm for pope Urban's expedition to Jerusalem swept western Europe the phenomenon of the first crusade continues to fascinate. This pamphlet examines the nature of the crusades and the motives of those who joined it, describes the hardships of the long journey to the Holy Land and...

As Christianity had spread across Europe, Islam had spread across the Middle East. At the end of the eleventh century the relationship between the Muslim leader of Jerusalem and the Christian communities and travellers to the city fractured. Along with other key relationships across Europe, the Middle East and around...

Dave Martin investigates why there is a war memorial for German soldiers, ‘buried in a foreign field’, in a Dorset churchyard.

This pamphlet covers a very large period of history in a very important region with great detail and focus. Themes that are covered include the transition of power and dominance in the pacific region, the conflicts that frequently arose in the struggle for pacific dominance throughout the centuries, as well...

4 Reviews 5 Editorial 6 The Battle of Waterloo: Sunday 18 June 1815 - John Morewood (Read Article) 13 News from 59a 14 Scum of the earth - or fine fellows? The British soldier in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars - Carole Divall (Read Article) 19 The President's Column 20 Medical...

4 Reviews 5 Editorial 6 A precious jewel: English Calais, 1347-1558 - Dan Spencer (Read article) 11 The President's Column 12 Britain: the regional battlefields that helped to create a nation - Geoffrey Carter (Read article) 17 St Peter's-ad-murum, Bradwelljuxta-Mare - Marie Paterson (Read article) 18 The Sykes-Picot agreement and lines...

4 Reviews 5 Editorial 6 Battle of the Somme: the making of the 1916 propaganda film - Taylor Downing (Read article) 12 MOOCs and the Middle Ages: England in the time of King Richard III - Deirdre O’Sullivan (Read article) 18 Earth in vision: pathfinding in the BBC’s archive of...

5 Editorial (Read article) 6 Ending Camelot: the assassination of John F Kennedy – Nicolas Kinloch (Read article) 11 Letters 12 Anti-Americanism in Britain during the Second World War – Kit Kowol (Read article) 17 The portrayal of historians in fiction: people on the edge? – Michael Bender (Read article) 22 Doomed to...

As well as being admired for their aesthetic beauty, medieval and early modern tapestries often conveyed deeper symbolic meanings. Here Damien Dessane examines a famous sixteenth century tapestry and reveals the insights it provides into Anglo-French relations in that period and into the increasing agency of some important women...

The Spirit of Normandy Trust Essay Competition is aimed at young historians and organised by the Historical Association (as part of the annual Young Historian Awards). The 2023 winner in the Key Stage 3 (lower secondary school) category is Ayan Sinha, a pupil at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wakefield. In this abridged...

Imperial ambitions during the First World War extended beyond the Middle East and Africa.  In this article Ben Markham looks at the territorial wrangling over Greenland. It is well known that the British Empire grew in size significantly in the wake of the First World War. In the course of...

The First World War broke out suddenly and unexpectedly in midsummer 1914, following the murder of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Hapsburg, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, at Sarajevo, in Bosnia, on 28 June. Since no war involving the European great powers had occurred since 1871, the possibility of...

This pamphlet provides a detailed account of  the events leading up to the outbreak of war in 1939, covering the various factors that played a role in the outbreak of war such as tension over Poland and the Spanish Civil War, as well as the nature and effect of diplomatic...

John McKendrick considers how Scotland’s wish to create a trading empire was dashed and made the Act of Union of 1707 almost inevitable.